


Last Hope

by Saedhriel



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, I'll just use the world, Slow Burn, The Walking Dead/Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan), The fic won't feature characters from the anime
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-07-21 16:57:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7395946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saedhriel/pseuds/Saedhriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood, the same blood that soaked his clothes and fell on the ground with a macabre rhythm. He didn't know how much was his and how much was theirs, but he knew one thing: she was safe.</p><p>"Carol...?" he called, her name being the only thing that could keep his mind sane.</p><p>Silence.</p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <img/><br/>  </p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	1. Run Boy Run

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my newest experiment! Last Hope is an AU between The Walking Dead and the anime Shingeki no Kyojin (also known as Attack on Titan). Please, don’t expect this AU to be a story with the same plot as the show or the anime. I have picked elements from both of them and thought a different story. Also, you don’t need to have watched the anime to follow this AU (if there’s anything specific I’ll leave an explanation).

 “Don’t let him go!” shouted a voice that echoed with rage in the forest. “Stop him!”

The forest was threatening, bushes looking like hideous claws, giant trees rising as sentinels around the fast silhouettes moving under the pouring rain. It had been raining for hours, and now the ground was muddy and slippery, hiding treacherous traps. Night was slowly falling, or maybe the heavy clouds in the sky caused the growing darkness.

The man gasped for breath as he tried to keep running and ignore his noisy heartbeats and the burning pain he felt in his muscles after hours of wild chase. His last hope to mislead the group running after him was to reach the river, and he was focusing his efforts on it. It wasn’t a good plan, but it was the only one he had. He was completely unarmed, he had no 3D maneuvers gear, no weapons, not even a simple knife. He couldn’t handle combat against them, so his only way out was to sneak into the river like a rat and pray for the stream to help him.

“Stop!”

He ignored the aggressive voice and continued his desperate escape. The air was rough on his throat and every rock he stepped on hurt his soles like sharp knives. The cold rain was getting in his eyes, blinding him, making him run like a wounded animal. He even grunted like one when a branch hit him in the face.

_Oh poor lonely wolf, away from his pack._

It was a primitive fear, an irrational despair what was guiding him, giving him a strength he didn’t know he still had. It was the cruel realization that he had become the prey. That he, the tireless hunter, was being hunted. In that moment, his life depended on how long his strides were and how much time his muscles could bear before they started to tear away from the bone.

“Last chance, man! Stop!”

_Like you ain’t gonna kill me if I stop, you bastard._

Suddenly a noise caught his attention: the sound of furiously running water. The river was near. He was close, so close to his salvation. For the first time since the hunting had begun, he allowed himself to have real hope.

But then he risked looking back to his persecutors and his heart froze when he realized that they were closer that he thought. Also, he counted three of them, the absence of the fourth freaking him out. He started to look around, feeling the breath of danger on his neck, and only then he realized the mistake he had just made.

“I told you to stop, man.”

The voice came from his left, and victory was palpable on it. The man didn’t have time to react. Something slim yet strong at the same time trapped his legs with violence, and he screamed when he felt the iron wire cutting his trousers and hurting his flesh like the teeth of an avid predator.

He hit the ground heavily, and even though the mud and the bushes mitigated his fall, his wrist cracked with an ugly sound as it bore his whole weight. Everything turned black and for a second, all he could do was to struggle for breath, his face buried in the mud. He couldn’t resist the two powerful hands that grabbed him, indelicately, and turned him over until he rested on his back, nor could he stop his captor’s strike as he straddled him and kept him from running away.

His ears rang when he received the blow on his jaw and after a while he felt the unmistakable taste of his own blood in his tongue. Rick Grimes knew how to punch, certainly.

“You’re one of the Dixon brothers, right?” asked Rick, his blue eyes flashing with fury. “You’re Daryl Dixon, huh?”

Daryl didn’t answer at first. He just stared at Rick with all the hatred he could collect, shivering under the cold rain. A thunder rolled in the distance.

“Fuck off, asshole.”

He saw the punch coming and this time his vision turned red. A painful red.

“Rick!”

The rest of the squad had reached them. Daryl could see a black woman, an Asian man and a short-haired woman. The three of them were holding the grips of their gear nervously, watching every shadow. He could read the fear on their faces. How much time did they have until one of those _things_ appeared?

“Rick, we should go,” whispered the black woman with a tone that didn’t accept any reply. “We can ask him in the prison. But we have to go _now_.”

But Rick didn’t want to listen to her. His attention was focused on Daryl, and when he returned his look, he saw a trail of madness in his eyes.

“What were you doing near our prison? Did the Governor send you?” he said, grabbing his shirt collar to draw his attention.

“Didn’t ya hear me?” replied Daryl, spitting the blood out of his mouth. “Fuck off, man.”

And then another punch. And pain, and pain, and pain. He was about to pass out.

“Hey, hey! You’re gonna kill him. Stop!” shouted the Asian guy.

The punches stopped. Daryl dropped his head against the ground, gasping. He couldn’t see, pain and rain blinding him. He could barely hear, barely think. The voices sounded distorted around him, as if they were far away from him. The ground was trembling below him, but he wasn’t sure if it was only his senses fooling him.

“Titan,” murmured a voice then. He knew that it was the short-haired woman. “Titan.”

_Titan._

Daryl tried to shuffle against Rick, but he was too weak. The movement woke another wave of pain that made him stop. Grinding his teeth, he let go a desperate sob.

“Go, go, GO!” shouted Rick urgently.

“What do we do with him?” asked the woman. Fear had sharpened her voice, but it still sounded reasonably calm when she faced Rick.

“JUST RUN!”

An inhuman scream joined Rick’s order. A tree fell next to them. Screams, more screams. Red pain.

And then darkness.


	2. Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl Dixon is now a prisoner in the Prison. Rick and his group need to know his relation with the Governor, and Carol is the one that will try to talk to him. How will this first meeting go?

Daryl woke up.

He felt dizzy and disoriented, his head hurting like hell. During a few seconds he stared at the bed above his head, confused, not sure of what he was seeing. Then he realized that he was lying on the mattress of a bunk bed. Stiff and with painful strings sticking his back, but a mattress after all.

He turned his head carefully to take a look of the rest of the room, but he had to close his eyes when everything blurred and the pricks in his temple became stronger. He wished not to puke.

It had been a while since somebody had hit him like that, as if they wanted to break skin, muscle and bone. Years ago, he had promised to himself that nobody would ever raise a hand against him without regretting it, and once again, he had failed. If his face hadn’t been so swollen that any gesture felt like someone was skinning him, he would have laughed.

After some minutes in which his whole world collapsed, he slowly opened his eyes. He discovered that he was in a cell poorly illuminated, the only light entering through the bars door. A locked bars door for sure.

He dropped his head over the pillow with a sense of defeat spreading through his body. A moan escaped from his lips when he tried to reach his face with his right hand, making him remember in the most painful way that his wrist –which someone had bandaged— was hurt. He also realized then that someone had sewed up the wounds on his legs there where the iron wire had cut him. His clothes had been removed but his sleeveless shirt and underwear, and a shiver went down though his spine as he was aware of what that could mean. His heartbeat became thunderous in his ears when fear run through his body like venom.

 “Fuck.”

As if someone had heard him, he started to hear the sound of steps approaching to his cell. It was a strange walking, marked by the heavy thud of wood. Like a pirate on his wooden leg, he thought.

Suddenly the cell darkened when a silhouette stood in front of the door. It was an old man with long white hair collected in a ponytail. Daryl could feel his gaze fixed on him even when his face was covered by shadows. The man rummaged inside his pocket until he found a key, and then he caught the lock of the door.

 Daryl tensed immediately and looked around him for anything that could use as a weapon.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t move so much, son,” said the man, unlocking the door and opening it between squeaks.

Daryl ignored him. He saw a candleholder on the small table next to his bed and, after a quick look at the old man, he stretched his arm and moved until half of his body was out of the bed, though he knew it was far from reach. He heard one more time the man warning him with infinite patience, like a grandfather would warn a thoughtless kid, before his vision failed him again.

He fell into the ground without any control, landing in the cold concrete like a lifeless puppet. The impact cut his breath, and during what seemed an eternity, he struggled to breathe. He barely sensed the old man kneeling beside him to sit him up, revealing a strength uncommon in someone of his age.

“Easy, easy,” said. Something in his voice was strangely reassuring, captivating as the whisper of a horse tamer, and Daryl simply left the man help him until he was resting again in the mattress. His whole body was screaming in pain at that moment, so he just looked carefully at the man, caution in his blue eyes.

“Glad to see you awake,” said the old man as he sat in a chair next to his bed with a tired sigh. He started to check out Daryl’s stitches with critical eye and Daryl knew that they were his work. “Tell me, how you feeling?”

Daryl didn’t answer. After a moment, the old man raised his eyes to look at him directly.

“Listen, Dixon,” he started. Again, tiredness was palpable in his voice. “Rick didn’t want me to treat you before he had talked to you. I refused to have a wounded man bleeding out in one of the cells, so prove me that I did the right thing. Don’t be stup-”

“What’re ya gonna do with me?” asked Daryl, interrupting him. He tried to give some toughness on his voice, but it still sounded weak and broken. He hated himself for that.

He knew that he should have held his tongue when the man lifted up and gave him a look full of resignation and compassion. He limped towards the door and Daryl finally saw the wooden leg of the man. Once he reached the door, he turned his head to look at him one last time.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

And he left.

* * *

Carol raised her eyes from the plate she had in front of her when she heard Hershel’s walking. Moments later, the heavy door from their hallway opened and he entered with his usual limp.

Everyone around the table stopped eating and looked at him as he approached to them and sit in the empty seat next to Maggie and Beth. Then he answered the untold question that was floating in the air.

“He’s awake,” said. “Hopefully he’ll be fine. For now, he needs to rest and to eat something.”

He stared at Carol when he said that, and she nodded slightly. She had helped Hershel to take care of the Dixon guy when they had brought him to the prison, injured and unconscious. They had spent all night with him, trying to wake him up with no result. As Hershel confessed her, he was afraid that he had a cerebral contusion after Rick’s beating. In that case, he could do nothing to save him.

“Good,” said Rick. He threw his fork against his food, barely touched, and lifted up. “I’m gonna talk to him.”

“Rick,” said Carol before the man could take another step. She lifted up too. “Let me talk to him.”

Rick looked at her and tilted his head. Carol swallowed and waited for his answer.

She had fear for Rick. He had lost control in the forest, and she wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t do the same if he couldn’t get what he wanted from Dixon. Maybe this time he would beat him to death without any remorse. What would stop him from doing it? Since Lori and their unborn child had died, the Rick Grimes they all knew was missing, replaced by a version full of rage and pain that was driving him mad.

“You should listen to Carol, Rick,” intervened Hershel. “He’s so confused right now, I don’t think he would-“

“Gotta do it,” interrupted Rick, focusing his attention on him. “If the Governor has any plans in mind, I want to know. If Dixon is part of those plans, I want to know.”

“I’ll do it,” repeated Carol. She breathed deeply, gathering all the courage she could find, and then added. “He won’t talk to you, Rick.”

His look was on her again but after a moment she realized that he wasn’t truly seeing her. His eyes seemed to be fixed on some point behind her and Carol could see how his face passed from fury to desolation in a matter of seconds, pupils wide open like two dark wells. She didn’t need to turn to know that nobody was really there.

“Alright,” said Rick. All his determination seemed to be gone. He let himself fall again in the chair and rubbed his temples. “Be careful.”

Carol nodded even when she knew that Rick couldn’t see her. She shared a worried look with Michonne. Maybe Dixon wasn’t the only one who needed help.

* * *

Daryl started and looked at the door, surprised. There was the short-haired woman, with her silver locks and her nice smile, knocking the bars with her knuckles, asking him for a permission that they both knew she already had. He hadn’t heard her steps, she was silent like a prison mouse, and that worried him. He didn’t like being taking by surprise.

When she understood that he wasn’t going to give her any permission, she opened the door —Daryl grinded the teeth before the squeaking hinges— and got inside the cell while carrying a tray with one hand.

“How are you?”

She tried to give to her voice a jovial tone. Perhaps any other person would have believed that happy mask she wore, but not him. He just stared at her, his expression telling her that she wasn’t welcome.

“I’ve brought you some food,” explained the woman. Daryl saw some spaghetti on the plate, sauce shyly scattered over them, when she left the tray on the table, next to him, and sat in the seat that had occupied the old man before her. “Since your wrist is hurt, I’ve cut the spaghetti so you can eat them easily.”

The corners of her mouth rose when the shadow of a smile combed her lips, a smile that didn’t get to her eyes. Daryl felt insulted before such a fake expression. He couldn’t help himself when irritation took control over him.

“What ya want from me?” asked her angrily. “Ain’t need your help, _bitch_. Just go away.”

He expected her to be offended, to shout at him, maybe to take back the food and leave him alone with his filthy words. However, she didn’t say anything in return, she just shrugged her shoulders. If she felt hurt, she didn’t let him know.

That was when their eyes met.

Her blue stare froze him. It was so straight, so clear and devastating, that he started to feel uncomfortable. He was vulnerable under her eyes, unable to run away, unable to hide what couldn’t be seen. He felt forced to an unwanted intimacy, to a violent connection, and he begged for its end. He hated her, her and her blue eyes.

And then he looked away. He broke the curse, he freed himself.

“Just don’t make things more difficult that they’re already,” she said. Her voice felt cold now, with a tone of warning on it. “I just need you to answer me a few questions.”

“What if I don’t wanna answer to your questions?” he asked in return, defiant. He was playing, he knew it, but he was trapped, no certainty of finding anything but death when they found out that he was worthless.

“You will,” replied the woman. “Because you’re smart. Rick is a man with no patience. He won’t doubt to kill you, so don’t give him reasons to do it.

Daryl seethed.

“Let’s be fair. We don’t trust you, you don’t trust us. If you try something stupid, I will kill you with my very own hands.” There was no hesitation in her voice, and he knew that she was telling the truth. “But you have a chance. We’re not like the Governor.”

Her words sounded so good. But they were lies, just like everything else.

“Go to hell.”

The woman looked irritated. Even then, her voice kept her softness.

“What were you doing yesterday around the Prison?” asked, implacably.

“None of your business, ma’am.” He couldn’t help the sarcasm imbuing his words. He would have added something, but suddenly the pain on his head increased, making his vision tremble, and he controlled the urge to scream.

“So the Governor sent you?”

“S’rry to tell ya but you ain’t the center of the universe,” he grunted in strangled whisper. He thanked for not having anything in his stomach. Otherwise, he would have vomited. He deeply breathed to calm down. “Believe it or not, but I owe nothin’ to that motherfucker, not anymore.”

The suspicion settled in her face made him understand that she didn’t believe him, at least not completely. He couldn’t blame her. Certainly she still remembered —as well as him— when the Governor had decided to attack the Prison as soon as he had found out its existence. Daryl and Merle weren’t there, stucked in another mission, but had heard the stories after that. The Governor had lost his right eye at the hands of a woman called Michonne. Nobody knew how she looked like but the Governor, though she had become kind of a myth. Even when nobody would ever say it loudly, Daryl knew that there were jokes in the dark hours of the watches, forbidden and hypocrite mutters that laughed at the crazy man that the Governor had become.

In all the time Merle and him had spent with the Governor, months of blind —and temporal— loyalty, they had seen how the powerful and charismatic man started to dig his own grave. He was cruel and unpredictable, and the only thing that kept his people by his side was fear. Because the fear of Titans and walkers was stronger than the fear the Governor, or any living person, could ever provoke.

 “Rick doesn’t know this yet, but we had seen some of his men in the forest this morning, looking for you,” said the woman, distracting from his thoughts. “You must have done something really terrible to piss him off. Right, _Daryl_? What did you do?”

A shiver went through his spine when she said his name, almost like she was tasting it, like she was teasing him. She looked at him with a treacherous smile, knowing perfectly that she had the control in that conversation. She knew since the beginning that he wasn’t following the Governor’s orders when he appeared in their territory the previous day.

 _Fuck_.

He felt the panic dominating him. The plan was to be far away when the Governor discovered what Merle and he had done. With his men already looking for them, any possibility of escape faded away.

“Why didn’t ya hang over me, huh?”

She didn’t answer. She stayed silent until Daryl felt that it was unbearable, and then she got up, still a smile playing on her face.

“Eat your food. You need to recover.”

Daryl watched her while she headed to the door, her skinny figure silhouetted by the light that entered through the bars, more tenuous with every passing minute. He asked her again and again she ignored him. When she reached the door, she stopped and looked at him over her shoulder.

“By the way, you can call me Carol.”


	3. Traitor

“What do we do with him?”

The question floated in the air, silence eloquent enough to know that it was a delicate issue.

Carol looked one by one the faces of all the survivors, not really sure of what she would find. Hershel seemed to be irritated while playing with his fingers, staring at Rick as the man walked though the room nervously. Maggie and Glenn were sitting together, holding hands, and Tyreese was next to his sister, Sasha, trying to calm her down when she added an impatient “ _So?”_ when nobody replied to her question. Michonne was leaning against the concrete wall, arms crossed over her body, in an apparent calm. There was no sign of Beth or Carl, but while the first one would be somewhere else, not interested in the reunion, the young kid would be spying them and trying to find out whatever they were going to decide.

It was late in the afternoon. The sunlight entered the barred windows with lazy weakness, and tiredness could be guessed in their faces after a day of hard work.

They were in the guards’ rest room. Maybe it was the sense of privacy, maybe it was the comfortable chairs, but they had acquired the habit of discussing the important decisions in there.

Seven days had passed since they had caught Daryl Dixon in the woods. Seven days in which nothing clear had been decided about his fate. The diversity of opinion had come to a point when the mere mention of the prisoner could start an argument, so they had delayed the decision as much as they could.

Also, Dixon had spent the first three days in the prison drifting in and out of consciousness, and the rest of the time in a taciturn silence, making impossible to know what his plans were or to decide if he was a friend or an enemy. The ones he had spoken to more were Carol and Hershel, but his replies were just monosyllables and short answers.

However, the time to make a decision had come, for better or worse.

“He can’t stay with us,” Maggie said, emphatically. “We can’t trust him, there’s no place here for him.”

“Maggie…” Glenn whispered. It was clear that he wanted to be more reasonable.

“He betrayed the Governor, why shouldn’t he do the same with us?” replied Maggie angrily, and Carol saw Sasha nodding in agreement. Before she spoke again, she squeezed Glenn’s hand in a silent reminder. “I won’t risk our baby’s life for a stranger.”

Carol couldn’t blame her. She could remember when she was pregnant with Sophia, how she had tried to protect her baby girl with a courage she didn’t know she had. Of course, it hadn’t been enough against Ed and his furious fists, but she still could identify the same fierce feeling in Maggie. She wouldn’t take any risk, and she was right.

“That man is not a killer,” Hershel intervened calmly. Maggie looked at him with surprise. “And I don’t know who’s more afraid, him or us.”

Hershel wouldn’t take any chances or put his unborn grandchild in danger if he wasn’t completely sure of what he was saying.

Carol shook her head, slightly confused. She didn’t think that Daryl Dixon was a killer, though he wasn’t a good man either. There was something in him that made her feel nervous. It was something dark and terrible, but at the same time, familiar. She didn’t know what it was, and that worried her.

“We could release him in the woods, away from the prison,” Tyreese said, interrupting the thread of her thoughts.

“We can’t do that,” Rick said. He had stopped his walk around the room, and his voice was cold when he continued talking. “He knows too much about us and about this Prison. How much time do you think it will pass until he comes back with others and tries to get his place? No, we can’t free him. There’s only one option left.”

Everybody knew what that option was that Rick was talking about. It was something they all had thought, but no one of them thought the situation would lead to it.

“So we kill him? That’s your solution?” Carol asked when the silence was too heavy to bear it. She tried to avoid the reproach in her voice but she couldn’t. How were they losing themselves so easily?

“That’s the easy option, Rick, not the fair one,” Hershel said. Though he didn’t raise his voice, it was clear and accusing, disappointment imbuing his words.

“He shouldn’t be here in the first place,” Rick hissed. He placed himself in the middle of the room, becoming the focus of attention. “We made a mistake capturing him. We need to get rid of him before the Governor finds out that he’s with us.”

They all knew that Rick was right. When they had caught Dixon, they weren’t aware that he was a fugitive of the Governor. It was a matter of time that their enemy discovered the truth, and then he would vent his fury against them. Would they risk suffering another attack, another blood bath? For a stranger?

“Let him come,” Michonne said, breaking her silence for the first time, rage in her eyes. “I’ll cut his other eye off.”

_That won’t bring back Andrea nor T-Dog, Michonne_ , Carol would have liked to say. But she knew Michonne well. She didn’t mean what she just had said. Pain made tongues speak thoughtlessly, just that.

“The Governor wants him, right?” Sasha began when the angry voices fell silent. “Let’s give him what he wants. We will exchange Dixon for Bob.”

“That’s condemning him to death and you know it,” accused Glenn, raising his almond eyes from the floor.

“Don’t you want Bob back, Glenn?” Sasha replied, dangerously soft.

“Of course I want him back! But not if the price is the death of another man!” said Glenn. “We’re making plans, we’ll rescue him soon…”

“We’re not any closer to rescuing him than we were a week ago, _Glenn_. They caught him two weeks ago,” the woman almost yelled. She spat his name with rage, and after a look loaded with resentment, she looked at all the faces. “This is our last chance. If you let it go, you’re killing him.”

And she fled. When she left the room, all anger and holding back the tears, the door remained open, but nobody cared for closing it.

“We will do the exchange,” announced Rick then, when Sasha’s steps faded in the distance. “It’s my last word.”

* * *

“This is madness,” confessed Glenn in a low tone of voice.

They were walking through the corridor towards Dixon’s cell. An hour had passed since the sun had disappeared, and the hallway was a sinister tunnel full of darkness. The cells around them were silent, startling in their emptiness, the perfect place for imaginary monsters.

Carol felt a stifling heaviness in the air, and she took a deep breath. That place, immersed in shadows, looked narrower and menacing than ever and she hated small places. She realized that her hands were trembling, the food bowls she was carrying on the tray shaking.

Dixon was at the end of the corridor, in the cell on the right. They had decided to keep him away from them in a sort of dungeon, unwilling to share with him their privileged hallway. But they couldn’t afford to leave any kind of light in an almost empty corridor, so that part of the block was in complete darkness after the sunset.

And every time she had to cross the corridor, she felt pity for him.

She turned to look at Glenn, who was holding the flashlight, and guessed in his tired expression that he just had an argument with Maggie.

“You okay?” she asked, worried. It was an unusual to see the couple in disagreement, but even more that they stayed that way for a long time.

“Yeah,” replied the young man, not very convinced. “It’s just… Why does Rick have to be like this? He’s not the man he used to be. Just a few months ago he would have listened to us. We can’t make a deal with the Governor.”

Carol sighed.

“You fall in a dark place when you lose your loved ones and you find yourself alone in the world,” said. She swallowed before continuing. “But he… he has to accept that Lori and the baby are gone. He has to find some peace… or he will lead us to perdition.”

She knew that her words sounded hard, maybe a little intransigent, even she could relate to Rick and understand him painfully well. The loss of a child was one of the most horrible ways to die on the inside. She knew. But Rick was going through the darkest path, dragging them with him.

“I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow, see if I can change his mind,” Glenn said.

“ _We’ll_ try tomorrow,” Carol corrected.

Glenn smiled slightly, and she smiled in return. Then she focused her attention in the candle light that escaped from the bars of Daryl’s cell. They were almost there.

She peeked into the cell. She discovered that Daryl was sitting up in his bed and staring at the door, tense, waiting for his visitors as if the Devil himself was going to meet him. A moment later, when he recognized her, his face surprisingly relaxed. However, his gesture soured when he saw Glenn behind her.

“Dinner’s here”, she said as Glenn opened the door and they stepped inside. The room was illuminated by two candles, drawing exaggerated shadows in the corners.

Daryl grunted something and ignored her, his eyes fixed on Glenn. Carol approached the table and put the tray on it.

“How are you feeling?”

Daryl looked away from Glenn for a second to focus on her.

“Never felt better,” he replied sarcastically. Carol raised an eyebrow at his response, and he cleared his throat. “Think the swelling is goin’ down.”

“May I?” Carol asked, sitting in the chair next to the bed. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t refuse to her petition either. He only stared at Glenn, wary, and waited.

Carol sighed for her inside. That redneck was stubborn as a mule. It had cost him three days to let her check out his injures without an endless string of grunts and negative answers. Fortunately, she had got used to it.

“Hey,” she called him, trying to draw his attention. “Show me the wound.”

At last, Daryl rolled up the leg of his trouser until his wounds were visible. The skin was red and swollen, though not as swollen as the day before, when even the touch of the fabric was painful enough to make him grind his teeth. The wounds had gotten infected two days ago, and Hershel had decided to use some antibiotics and antiinflammatories.

“They look better than yesterday,” Carol said. “You’re lucky.”

“I had worst,” Daryl replied after a moment. “Much worst.”

_This is nothing_ , his words seemed to tell.

Carol looked at his face then, only to look away when her eyes met his, suddenly uncomfortable. She had seen the scars on his chest and back days ago while he was unconscious, becoming a witness of something she wasn’t supposed to see; she knew what he was talking about. She knew what _much worst_ could mean.

“Hershel will come to see you in the morning,” Glenn said in that moment. “He wants to-“

Carol was vaguely hearing him. She had focused her attention in Daryl’s injures again. She needed to know if the antiinflammatories were doing their work and the temperature of the wounds had decreased, so she raised her hand to touch his skin.

And then it happened. Daryl held a scream of pain and surprise and moved abruptly, startling her. She didn’t think, she didn’t even process what she was doing when she leaned back and turned away her face with her eyes close, avoiding the slap.

But the slap never came.

When she realized that her mind had tricked her, she tried to pretend that nothing had happened, slightly ashamed with herself. However, her breathing was still accelerated, her hands still shaking. . That’s what Ed had taught her. To fear the smallest movements. To always remember him.

“Sorry,” she said. Behind her, she sensed Glenn approaching to her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just needed…”

She expected some rude comment from Dixon, but he didn’t say a word. His silence became so heavy that she dared to look at his face.

His eyes were fixed on her. There wasn’t anger on them, or mistrust. There was curiosity. There was understanding. And there was something more she couldn’t bear.

“It’s late, Carol,” Glenn said, grabbing her shoulder gently. “We should go.”

She gasped and broke the contact with him. A part of her sighed with relief.

“You’re right.”

They left the cell a few minutes later. Neither of them mentioned what just had happened in a non-spoken deal while they returned to the bright side of the prison.

Carol shook her head as she tried to ignore the darkness around her. She was confused. How could that man make her feel like he was looking inside her without her permission? How could she feel so uncomfortable under his blue eyes? She didn’t like to feel vulnerable, not anymore.

But beyond that, she had recognized something in his eyes, something that had scared so much. She had realized that he was broken. As broken as her.

“Glenn,” she called. Beside her, he looked at her. “We can’t hand him over.”

* * *

Daryl waited until the steps faded in the distance. Then, he lifted, grinding his teeth when the stitches in his legs tensed, and started to pick his few belongings.

It was time to leave the prison.


	4. Prison Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who wanted to see Carol on a 3DMG. Friendly reminder of what a 3D maneuver gear is and how it works: watch this video or read this wikia.

The lock gave way after some minutes of cold concentration. It fell into the ground with a noise that Daryl found strident in the silence of the corridor. He froze and stood quiet for a few seconds, attentive to any sounds that could mean that he had been discovered.

Nothing.

The Prison was sleeping.

Sighing with relief, he pocketed the tiny wire he just had used as lock-pick. It was a spring from the mattress. He had spent one afternoon tearing the fabric of the mattress with his bare hands and pull the string from the pocket in which it had been sewn up. After that, he had turned the mattress over to hide the hole in it and had prayed for the burnt smell of his shirt —it had burnt when he had brought the candle too close to him as he worked — to have disappeared by the time someone came to check on him.

The waiting had been the hardest part. He and Merle had made a plan in case they got separated during their escape. They would meet in one week’s time in the abandoned refuge they had found some months ago.

He hadn’t thought so much about Merle since Rick and his group had caught him. He hadn’t let himself. He didn’t know what would happen to him if Merle didn’t show up at the refuge, what he would do. Merle was the only person that had ever cared about him and the only person he could trust. Without him, he was lost.

He looked at the open lock and wondered if Merle would have been proud of him. He had taught him all those tricks. They hadn’t been living outside the law all those years for nothing. It hadn’t been easy to live with him, and sometimes he asked himself how different his life would have been if Merle hadn’t been with him. No drugs, no fights, no screams nor insults, but neither a supporting hand nor a tricky smile. They were in deep shit, but they were in deep shit together.

Merle was his only family, and he would find him at any cost.

He picked one of the candles and put out the other. He opened the door slowly and cringed when a screech echoed up and down the hallway. He forgot to breath, waiting for any sound that could mean his perdition: running footsteps, voices. He stood still as a statue, and then he allowed himself to breathe again when he reassured that he was the only living being in the hallway. Only then he stepped out of his cell. He held up the candle like a talisman, lighting up the corridor, and started walking with caution. Even when the moonlight entered through the windows of the gallery, it was so weak that it felt like he was in a tunnel.

It was late in the night and he knew that nobody would be scheduled to come to check on him until some hours later. If he was lucky, he would be far away from the Prison when they noticed that he had gone. He only wished not to find anyone out of their bed, being aware that he wouldn't refrain from using violence to ensure his escape.

He walked down the corridors of the cellblock trusting his memory more than his eyes. He had something to thank Hershel for, namely that the old man had considered allowing him out of his cell for short walks around the hallways good for his recovery. Of course, they had never let him enter cellblock C, where the group lived, but it had been enough for him to draw up a plan.

He didn’t know if he liked the man for his kindness or hated him for his ingenuity. This wasn’t the time to have faith in strangers —if it had ever been the time. He had helped him, had probably saved his life, but he couldn’t help but think that Hershel was stupid. And stupidity got people killed.

He reached the door at the end of the corridor. It had a heavy bolt, but there was no lock on it, and he smiled to himself. He couldn’t believe his own luck, if he could call it that. But it wasn’t luck, after all. A prison without any electricity wasn’t a frightening place as before the downfall of the world, and many of the keys for the cells and doors on the Prison had to have been lost long time ago. The place was an empty shell.

He opened the door and entered the hall to which it connected. There were some tables and stools, and some stairs led to a security cabin. And then there was the door to freedom. He could see the courtyard beyond it, surrounded by fences. And after that, the 15 meter-high wall crowned with two watch towers that protected all the fields of the Prison from Titans and other unwanted visitors.

The outside door opened without any problem, and he left block D under the moonlight. It was bright enough to walk without any lights, and also he couldn’t risk to be spotted, so he abandoned the candle inside the cellblock.

He could feel his heart beating furiously in his chest and tried to swallow in order to calm down. He was afraid of being caught, knowing that if that happened he wouldn’t receive the same mercy again, but at the same time, he was kind of excited, the tension sharpening his senses. The smallest sound was enough to make him startle, and soon he found himself constantly looking around nervously. He used the shadows as cover in an attempt to turn into a shadow himself.

Suddenly, he saw a figure from the corner of his eyes. He ran to hide behind some barrels placed to catch rainwater, his stitches screaming in pain when he bent down, waiting to hear a shout of alarm at any moment. But nothing happened. When he peered out between two of the barrels, he saw the black woman walking away towards block C. Her name was Sasha, and she hadn’t missed any opportunity to let him know that he wasn’t welcome every time it had been her turn to check out his cell.

At least someone would be happy when the Prison people discovered that he was gone.

Panting agitatedly, he waited until he saw her disappear inside block C. The metallic clang of the door closing relaxed him a bit. Now he had a few minutes until the next guard started their round. There was no time to lose.

He crept out behind the fences and ran through the expanse of green behind it. There was no place to hide on his way to the wall, only grass. He was aware that he was vulnerable, his back facing the Prison, so he continued running as if his life depended on it. And for the second time, no shouts of alarm sounded after him.

 _Oh lucky, lucky boy_ , a sarcastic voice that reminded him so much of Merle said on his mind. _Now the wall. The wall!_

And he reached the wall. He looked up, to the top of it, knowing that he would have to climb to get out of the Prison. Of course, the watch tower had stairs to get to the top of the wall, but using them wasn’t even an option if he wanted to avoid any risk to get caught. All walls also had a door to communicate with the outside, but he was pretty sure that that door was locked up tight, and he had no time to try to open it. Climbing was his only and easier way out.

He started to walk around the wall, looking at it with a critical eye. He knew the structure and was looking for the steps that he knew that were sculpted into the wall.

He had helped to built walls some time ago, when everything had started. Walkers had appeared, some dead creatures that once were humans. Skepticism had turned into panic when the walking dead had spread all over the world. It took the Army some months to control them, the price to pay translating into thousands of casualties and the loss of billions of dollars, but apparently the danger was over. Walkers were slow and stupid, and humans got heavy weapons to protect themselves. Somehow, humanity could handle it.

But then Titans had arrived.

Nobody knew why, nobody knew how, but suddenly humanity was trying to survive in the cruelest way. The world fell into chaos while those monsters destroyed everything they found. Whole cities were devastated in a few days, Governments collapsed and people discovered that there was no place to run away. Walkers, which seemed harmless in the beginning, were now the deadly allies of the Titans.

The apocalypse had arrived after all.

Some cities tried to resist. They tried to build walls around them, high, wide walls to hold on. It was hard, but they had the resources to do it. The walls gave the survivors some extra time, less and less with every passing day. But it was too late. It was always too late because humanity was a fish choking out of the water. It was dead without knowing it.

He and Merle had moved to Atlanta when the Government sent out a call, asking people to go to the cities. It would be easier to organize the defenses, they said. Even when neither of them had ever seen a Titan up close, just on the news, they knew that it was a matter of time before they saw one, so they had gone to the capital and found job as builders of the Wall of Atlanta. They built walls against people’s fears.

That had been months before society collapsed.

Daryl shook his head, shooing away the memories, and focused on the wall. He found the iron clamps tacked into the concrete, protruding like rusty teeth. After a deep breath, he started to climb, up his road to freedom. He didn’t think about how the fall would kill him, he didn’t listen to the pain of his battered body. He just lifted one hand after the other, one foot after the other.

Up. Always up.

* * *

Daryl wasn’t aware that someone was following him when he finally reached the ground and ran toward the forest. He didn’t see the blue eyes that, wide open with confusion, followed his steps from the watch tower, nor hear the gasp that escaped Carol’s mouth when she recognized him.

Daryl disappeared into the trees in front of her eyes, their branches hiding him from her. If she didn’t do anything, he would escape. There was no time to warn the others.

She left the watch tower behind and stayed on the edge of the wall, looking for him without any success. She looked back to the prison hoping to see, but she was alone.

She herself wasn’t supposed to be there. She had joined Sasha in her watch only because she couldn’t sleep, like most nights. Nobody was surprised when they saw her appear on the tower, carrying her 3D maneuver gear, even when it wasn’t her turn. Did Dixon know who was on watch tonight? It seemed impossible, but at the same time, it was too deliberated to be a coincidence. Anyway, they had underestimated him.

She looked down and stood breathless before the 15 meter fall at her feet. She adjusted the straps and harnesses of her 3D maneuver gear and held on tight to the hand grips until her knuckles turned white. She jumped into the void.

Wind scourged her face as she pulled the trigger on the grips. Iron wires tipped with hooks flew out of her belt to tack on the trees, propelling her through the air with the grace of a grey bird. She landed on the branch of a pine and took a deep breath, her heart still pounding in her ears.  Long past was the time when she got sick every time she used the gear.

The moon shone brightly enough to illuminate the forest, though most of its light couldn’t reach the ground. It took her a few seconds to find Daryl, barely an outline running away from the Prison.

She went after him at a safe distance, always able to see him but far enough away not to reveal herself. The sound of the iron wire ripping the air went with her as she jumped from one tree to another with an agility she would have considered impossible just a few months ago. The branches rustled under her weight as some needles fell down. Beneath her, she got to hear the moans of some walkers, unaware of her presence, receiving the needle rain without noticing. She prayed for them to be the only monsters around.

Daryl seemed to be heading in a specific direction. Was he going to meet someone? His movements were abrupt, his head moving in every possible direction at any sound. He was unarmed, and Carol wondered how crazy he had to be —or how little he had to lose— to dare to go outside like that.

Her conscience was yelling at her to stop Daryl, but a part of her was curious. She wanted to know where he was heading or who he was meeting. Anyway, she silenced that voice. She had the situation under control, she repeated to herself.

The hunt didn’t go on for too long. Some minutes later, Carol saw an old refuge. She recognized it — it was a ranger post that they had discovered months ago as they inspected the lands near the Prison. Someone had looted it before, so there was nothing they could use in there. But apparently, someone else had found it useful after them.

Dixon disappeared inside it. Carol descended to the ground and approached the refuge carefully, hiding behind some bushes. From where she was, she could see through the open door into a big room connected to another. Daryl had continued into the second one, prompting her to further approach the window to look inside.

After a few seconds, her eyes got used to the semi-darkness. Unlike the last time she had been there, when the whole place had been in ruins, now she could see that someone had cleaned up it and used it as storage.

There were huge shapes on the floor. Carol detected a bright metallic glint, and when she looked closer, her eyes widened with surprise: they were 3D maneuver gears. And there were ten of them.

She understood now why the Governor wanted Daryl Dixon’s head.

It wasn’t that the man had betrayed him, it was that he had stolen him the only weapons that could defeat a Titan. Not one, not two, but ten of those gears. The one thing that could make a difference between life and death.

Surely, Dixon had balls.

Nowadays, the group of survivors that had the higher number of those weapons was the most powerful one. No fire weapon could compare to them. The Prison needed them.

“Merle?” Daryl’s voice startled her. It sounded too close to her, and it didn’t come from inside the ranger post. The building might have another exit that she didn’t know. “Is that yo-? Oh, _fuck_!”

Carol gasped and stepped back, looking around frenetically. She caught movement in the corner of her eye, and she moved her hand to pull the sword out of the scabbard. Daryl hit her hand, making her drop the weapon as she yelled. The sword bounced against some stones, the metallic sound echoing in the silent forest like the chiming of a bell.

She struggled against him fiercely, but the fight was short. Daryl was stronger than her, and she couldn’t do a thing when he immobilized her against the wall. She continued moving and kicking until it was clear that she couldn’t escape. In a desperate attempt, she kicked his leg, and she heard his scream as he shrunk into himself. However, his grip didn’t loose.

“Damn it, woman!”

Carol looked at him, gasping for breath. She wouldn’t deny it, she was terribly afraid. Admitting otherwise would be lying. Her legs seemed unable to carry her weight when he talked.

“You’re a real piece of work, lady,” Daryl hissed. He ground his teeth. His voice was full of anger, but Carol also perceived a tone of worry. They were so close that their faces almost touched, and she froze when Daryl’s eyes looked directly into hers. “Gimme a reason not to kill ya. You’re alone, no one’s coming to save ya.”

Carol forgot to breathe for a second, a shiver of fear going down her spine. But she forced herself to take a deep breath, knowing —or trusting— that he was only trying to scare her.

“You won’t do that,” she said, her voice drowning in her throat. “You’re not that kind of man.”

His eyes showed confusion first, then mistrust.

“You don’t know shit ‘bout me,” he said. She gasped as his hands held her tightly. “You don’t know me.”

And he was right. She didn’t know him. But a part of her —she didn’t know if that part was moved just by desperation— wanted to believe in him. She wanted to believe in the man with the scars, the man with the tortured eyes.

Suddenly, the ground trembled. Daryl leaned his head abruptly, reminding her of a wild animal, and he stepped back, horror in his eyes. The ground trembled one, two, three times after that. A treacherous calm followed, in which even the owls kept silent.

Daryl opened his mouth to tell her something, but she never understood him. His words, just like the rest of the sounds in the forest, were devoured by the inhuman roar of a Titan that made their blood run cold.

Carol saw a giant shadow knocking down trees as it ran in their direction, bloodthirsty screams coming out of its mouth. Its eyes, bright even in the darkness, were fixed on them. 

An uprooted tree fell over them with a grinding sound. Daryl pushed her away right before it crashed into the ranger post, and she violently fell to the ground. Behind her, the wall shook but held still.

The fifteen-meter Titan was barely five meters away from her. Its features seemed to be those of a female, its hair brown and its eyes dark green. That was the only resemblance with a human being, as its eyes were empty of any recognition and its mouth was full of teeth made to tear flesh. It was a killing machine. And it was looking at her. For an ephemeral second, she would have sworn that the monster was smiling at her. Death was pointing at her.

She got up quickly from the ground and picked her sword up. The hand of the monster closed a moment later in the place she just had left, and the Titan screamed in frustration. She gazed around briefly, looking for Dixon, but he just had disappeared. He was gone.

She was alone.

Carol pulled the trigger and shot off the iron wire. She lifted in the air, running away from the hands of the monster, but she discovered soon that her enemy was fast enough to follow her movements and avoid her attacks. Every time she landed somewhere, the Titan was right behind her, and it almost caught her in three occasions. The Titan knocked down all the trees around them, making harder for her to use the gear.

And then it happened.

She was trying to slice out the nape of its neck when she made a mistake. One of the iron wire got stuck in the ground, very close to the Titan. It only had to stretch its hand, and it caught the thin wire. She knew in that moment that she was lost.

The Titan pulled on the wire. She lost her balance and screamed, aware she was nothing but a puppet in those monstrous hands. Everything was spinning around, ground and sky becoming a blurry view in front of her eyes. Then the monster, like a child who got bored of a toy, dropped her.

She felt the vertigo, and she felt the brick wall when she collided with it. The pain that went through her whole body was indescribable as she fell to the ground, unable to control her own body. She closed her eyes, defeated, waiting for the Titan to end its work.

And she waited.

She opened her eyes when the Titan screamed in pain. She saw a quick figure around it, delivering powerful strokes. She recognized Daryl, and she sighed with relief. At last, Goliath had found its David.

She had to have lost consciousness, because when she opened her eyes again, the Titan was on the ground with thick smoke rising from the wound at the nape of its neck. She discovered Daryl standing next to her, looking down at her. He was bloody and shaky, his hair matted on his skull and his eyes shining with a fire that scared her.

She wished to move, to talk to him, but her body refused to obey her. Their eyes met, but he looked away. He didn’t say a word when he dropped his swords, nor when he started to walk away from her until Carol couldn’t see him any longer.

She tried to call him, and again she failed. She felt fear spreading through her veins when she understood that she was alone. Alone and wounded, and nobody was going to help her that time.

Maybe he could kill her, after all.


	5. In The Dark

When Daryl returned to Carol, she had passed out. She was laying on the ground pale as death, and Daryl would have thought that she was if it hadn’t been for her chest heaving up and down.

“Fuck.”

He knelt beside her. He shook her, grabbing her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, softly. “Hey.”

He didn’t get an answer. He looked closer at her face, looking for any signal of consciousness. That was when he noticed the trail of blood on her head. He carefully brushed away the silver locks until he saw the scalp covered by dried blood. He got scared at first at the large amount of blood, then he forced himself to keep his head cool, reminding himself that scalp wounds tended to bleed copiously.

He took the water bottle he just had brought with him from the refuge and the strips he had made ripping a shirt. He soaked the strip and tried to clean the blood from her skin to see how severe the wound was. He felt her shuddering under his hands, but she didn’t wake up.

“Hey. You hear me?” he said. “ _Carol_ , you hear me?”

Again there was no answer. He continued cleaning the dried blood without hesitation, his pulse steady as a surgeon’s after years of forced practice. Despite it, he couldn’t avoid the increasing worry as he removed the blood, afraid of what he could find. When he finally reached the wound, he let out a sigh to release the tension. It was just a scratch, though it had bled so much. Maybe she would need a couple stitches, but she would be alright. He checked out the rest of her body looking for more wounds, but he found none. Then why didn’t she wake up?

He had to take her to Hershel.

He looked once more at her face before getting up. He ran his hands over his face, breathing heavily. The warm blood of his wounds stained his face without even noticing.

_Fuck._

He looked around one last time, hoping to see Merle appear at any moment. But even he, in his blind hope, knew that Merle wasn’t coming. Only one hour —two at most— was left before sunrise, and there was no sign of his brother. If he hadn’t appeared yet, he wouldn’t do it now.

Daryl took a stone from the ground and approached the brick wall of the ranger post. He drew a signal for Merle to let him know he had been there, in the case that he showed up. He had no doubt about it: sooner or later, his brother would come back to him. He would be waiting for him. No matter how much time it would take, he wouldn’t leave Merle behind. Never.

Or that was what he told to himself in order to calm down. Though hope was fragile, and anxiety started growing inside him, strangling that hope like a weed would strangle a beautiful flower. He watched the wall one last time, biting his thumb nervously, and then he turned away with a promise floating in the air: the Dixon brothers would meet again. But now, there was someone else that needed him.

Around them, the forest was quite silent, as if killing the Titan had muted it. It was an expectant calm, and he hated it instantly. They had to disappear from there as soon as possible. If another Titan appeared at that moment, he couldn’t do anything against it.

He fell on his knees next to Carol, gasping. After checking out that she was still breathing and her pulse was steady and strong, he proceed to untie the straps of her gear, ruined after the impact against the wall. That bloody thing weighed almost five kilograms, and he wasn’t sure that he could even bear his own weight.

“’kay, woman, let’s do this,” he mumbled. He tented her legs, making sure they would stay like that before grabbing her right arm. Pulling her into a sitting position, he bent down to drape her arm over his own left shoulder before pivoting on his feet until her body, legs straight now, was resting against his back. Stooping, he reached down with his right hand to grab her right ankle and use it to pull her leg over his right shoulder so she was draped over his shoulders, her weight centered between his shoulder blades, her right arm and leg down over his chest so he could easily hold her in place. He strained under their combined weight to straighten his back, grinding his teeth until he thought he would break them.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to take a step, but his legs betrayed him. He fell on his right knee, too weak to hold up. Air felt rough in his throat when he deeply breathed and counted slowly to ten, trying to gather some strength. He rose up with an angry curse leaving his lips, and he cursed again when his feet sunk in the mud.

His legs trembled with the effort, and he panted in despair. Still he managed to take a step, and then another, his stubbornness forcing him to keep moving. The hidden paths that he had treaded before with such ease looked like insuperable obstacles now, and he felt with every step how fatigue was winning the battle.

The forest looked even more threatening with every step forward, all those shadows around him like giants, waiting for him to fail. He found himself looking afraid at the trees, completely sure that at any moment, when he turned his back, one of those shadows would turn to be a Titan. And then all would be over.

Even the moonlight had disappeared, trapped by the branches — _claws, they were claws of monsters_ — of the trees. Every sound was a signal of alarm, every change in the breeze was a warning. He felt a thousand of eyes fixed on him, and wondered if he was losing his mind.

There came a moment when all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, heavy and tired. He was no longer thinking, just concentrated in lifting a foot in front of the other like an automaton. Therefore, when he tripped over his own feet, he couldn’t get up.

With his knees stuck in the muddy ground, gasping for breath, he felt his determination diluting along with the drizzling rain that had started to fall. He managed to leave Carol on the ground next to him with all the care he could gather and stared at her. Was someone at the Prison looking for her? Had someone noticed their absence?

He let out an exhausted sigh and crawled to a tree until his back was leaning on it. He left his head fall against the trunk and looked up. Where stars should have been, there was only leaves and darkness. During a second, he felt trapped in a green cage, and he closed his eyes, discouraged, praying for waking up from that nightmare.

“I was right,” a weak voice said, breaking the maddening silence. He opened his eyes, startled, and discovered the blue eyes of Carol fixed on him. She was awake, lying on the ground next to him. “You’re not that kind of man.”

“Shut up,” he grunted, although he couldn’t avoid the wave of relief that ran through his veins.  Their eyes met for a brief second, and the goosebumps spread over his skin. Trying to escape from that look, he gazed up again and cleared his throat.

What was he going to do now? Carol was conscious, but she couldn’t make her way back to the Prison alone. She was hurt, leaving her wasn’t even an option. But returning to the Prison was signing his death penalty after what he had done. Nobody in their right mind would trust him a second time. If he could take her to the vicinity of the Prison and then run away before anybody saw him, he would have a chance. The question was… run away _where_?

_Havin’ your hero complex again, baby brother?_

The voice of his brother echoed in his mind as if he was by his side. He imagined the sarcasm in his voice, the reproach in his eyes. His brother would blame him for what he was doing, which was risking his life for a stranger, for a person he barely knew. _This is not what has kept us alive_ , he would have said. And he would be right. In the end, he realized, he was as stupid as Hershel.

A noise caught his attention. When he looked down, he discovered Carol trying to sit up. She didn’t make a sound of complaint, but Daryl noticed her pursed lips, as if she was holding back the pain. She buried her face in her hands and took a deep breath.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” she answered, though her voice seemed to tell otherwise.

“You think you can walk?” Daryl asked. Before she could say a word, a branch rustled somewhere, followed by a furious hoot and a wing beat. They both stayed still as statues, listening to the darkness with their hearts beating wildly in their chests. After a few seconds, they heard moans and grunts weakened by the distance. Walkers.

“We gotta go. Now,” Daryl mumbled urgently.

His whole body complained when he got up, using the trunk behind him as support. He ignored the blood that soaked his clothes — _blood, it’s just blood_ — and limped towards Carol. He offered her his hand, which she took with a hint of gratitude on her face. But gratitude was quickly removed by pain when Daryl pulled her up, revealing what she was trying to hide.

 “I’m good,” she said as soon as she stood on her feet. She tried to move away from him, pretending to have a strength she hadn’t, and she would have fallen if Daryl hadn’t been there. He wrapped his arms around her when he saw her falling.

“Hey, easy, easy,” Daryl whispered, his voice enveloping Carol like a warm blanket. She nodded weakly, and he put an arm around her. “Ain’t gonna let you fall. C’mon.”

He sensed her hesitant arm holding on to him as she leaned on him. His whole body tensed under her touch, so urgent and desperate, as if he was the only thing real in the world, as if he was her anchor.

“C’mon,” he repeated while pushing her slightly to make her walk.

They advanced in an almost complete darkness, the cadence of their breathing rivaling the sounds of the monsters hidden in the shadows. They walked for what seemed an eternity, helping each other even when they couldn’t help themselves. When the first rays of the sunrise broke over the horizon, they found the little creek that provided water to the Prison, barely a few miles to the West.

The water was fresh and clear, promising as an oasis in the middle of a desert. Tired and thirsty as they were, the look of understanding that they shared was enough to make them decide to stay there for a few minutes, just to drink and clean their wounds.

“How you feelin’?” Daryl asked Carol shyly when they were done. He was watching the trees, looking for any sign of danger —from walkers… or humans—, waiting for Carol to finish.

She didn’t answer immediately.

“I’ve had _worse_ ,” she replied finally, giving him the same answer he had given her and Glenn the day before. Daryl turned his head to look in her direction, suspicion in his eyes. Neither of them added anything, and silence fell upon them.

Carol approached him until she was by his side.

“Daryl,” she said, and Daryl felt a shiver going down his spine when she pronounced his name. There was no teasing in it like the previous time she had called him at the Prison. There was true concern, as if she was going to regret what she was about to do. She looked around nervously before continuing. “Go away.”

Daryl blinked, confused.

“What?”

“Go now,” she repeated. “You were looking for your brother in that post, right? Go and find him. Go now and never come back.”

He squinted, the confidence he had started to feel towards Carol falling like a house of cards against the wind. It sounded like a trap, too perfect to be true. He couldn’t stop his eyes from looking around as he stepped back from Carol.

“Listen,” she added, noticing the change in his expression. “The Prison is near. I can return by myself from here. I’ll go and tell that I was trying to stop you when a Titan appeared, and you used the confusion to run.” She stopped and breathed deeply. “They can’t find you here. I hope to be wrong, but if they do, they will give you to the Governor so we can have Bob back. And that’s not fair. You saved my life, now I’m saving yours. That’s how I pay my debt. _Now go_.”

Daryl stood still for a few seconds, trying to assimilate what he just had heard. She didn’t seem to be lying and, at the same time, her words sounded totally false. But he looked her in the eye, and somehow, he _knew_ that she was telling the truth. She was offering him freedom.

He opened his mouth to say _thank you,_ words he wasn’t used to saying to anyone. He was ready, and suddenly…

Suddenly, he saw the alarm in her face.

“Rick, don’t!”

He tried to turn back. And again, it was too late. The cold edge of a sword caressed his neck when Rick Grimes said behind him.

“Make any movement and you’re dead, Dixon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't supposed to end with a cliffhanger, you know. But I can't help. Take a seat because this AU just has started!
> 
> Also special thank you for my wonderful beta-readers.


	6. One of Us

Rick arrived with the silence of a sly serpent, jumping from one tree to another without being noticed. Carol saw him right before he landed on the ground, his swords out of his scabbards, but she couldn’t do anything when he forged ahead, getting closer to Daryl from behind, and put the sharp blade on his neck with extremely care, almost with crazy tenderness as he tilted his head.

“Make any movement and you’re dead, Dixon.”

Daryl’s eyes showed surprise, and then the initial surprise turned into rage and defiance, but he finally raised his arms as a sign of surrender. He locked his gaze on Carol as an expression of disgust crossed his face when Rick started to untie his 3D maneuver gear with his free hand. It fell into the ground with a heavy thud and Rick kicked it to set it aside. Rick didn’t miss the fact that Carol wasn’t wearing her gear, and his eyes went again to the gear that Daryl had been carrying. She noticed the change in his expression, how his look darkened as his mind jumped to the most logical —and wrong— conclusion.

Carol caught a movement from the corner of her eye, and Glenn landed next to them, followed by Sasha. They moved until they were at both sides of Daryl, surrounding him like a pack of hunting dogs would prey. Daryl tensed, the angle of his jaw clearly visible as he grinded his teeth. His eyes, however, remained fixed on hers.

“On your knees,” Rick said. Carol feared that he would refuse, but he obeyed after a long silence. A quick shadow of pain appeared on his face when his knees touched the ground, though it disappeared so quick that it would have gone unnoticed if Carol hadn’t been looking straight at his face.

“Are you okay, Carol?” Rick asked. His voice sounded worried in the view of the dried blood on her clothes. “Did he do this to you? Did he steal your gear?”

“No!” she replied, alarmed, the mere question being unconceivable for her.”A Titan did. If it wasn’t for Daryl, I wouldn’t be here. He saved me.”

“If it wasn’t for Dixon, you wouldn’t be outside alone in the first place,” Rick said, rage imbuing his words. He looked at her furiously, all worry replaced by reproach. “We’ll talk later about you going after him without telling anyone. You could have died because of him.”

“Well, I didn’t,” she said. “And that doesn’t change the fact that I owe him my life.”

Rick gazed down at Daryl, who had fixed in eyes on the ground. He was slightly trembling, struggling to stay still on his knees.

“What happened with the Titan? Where is it?” Rick asked inquisitively, changing the subject. Carol saw the swollen veins of his neck, palpitating with every word he said.

“Dead,” Daryl muttered.

“You killed it?”

Daryl turned his head, trying to look at Rick, still behind him.

“You’re as stupid as ya look, huh?” he replied. Carol wished that he could hold his tongue. He wasn’t making things easier. Rick tilted his head again, and increased the pressure of the edge of his sword against Daryl’s skin, drawing a tiny line of blood.

“Do not mock me, Dixon, I’m warning you,” Rick hissed. “Your life depends on it.”

“He defeated the Titan on his own,” Carol intervened to draw Rick’s attention to her. As she pronounced those words, she noticed the calculating look that appeared in Rick’s eyes. He looked at Daryl as if he saw him for the first time, reevaluating him, clearly surprised. It was extremely difficult for one person to fight a Titan and be victorious.

She would have added something more, but suddenly she felt dizzy. She raised a hand to her head as she closed her eyes. Before she was even aware, Glenn was by his side, giving her a concerned look and placing a hand on her back.

“Where did you get that gear?” Sasha was asking at that moment, talking for the first time since they had arrived. Her voice was cold as ice, but Carol suspected that she was holding back her rage, or maybe something worst.

Daryl took a deep breath before answering.

“I found it.”

“You _found_ it,” Sasha repeated, sarcastically.

“We’ll find out later,” Rick said. His eyes were moving nervously around them, knowing that the more time they spent outside, the higher the possibility of being surprised by Titans. “We’re going back to the Prison. Let’s go.”

He removed the sword from Daryl’s neck and replaced it on his back, forcing his prisoner to stand up. Daryl’s eyes, filled with defeat and resignation, met Carol’s before Rick made him start walking with a rough order, and they overtook her and Glenn. They went after Sasha, who had picked the gear from the ground and was already following the course of the creek, leading the march.

Glenn put an arm around Carol’s shoulders, and she thanked him with a weak smile. After that, they started following Rick back to the Prison, back to home. During the entire way back, Carol’s blue eyes didn’t leave Daryl for a second.

* * *

 

They secluded Daryl in a different cell this time. It was in a cell on block D, a place that he was afraid he would end up calling home if things didn’t change. Hershel paid him a quick visit to check him out and take care of his wounds, old and new ones, and though he was as kind as ever, he didn’t answer any of his questions. Then he left, and the visit seemed to Daryl as unreal as if a ghost had been there with him.

For a couple of hours nothing happened, the quiet cell making Daryl lose his temper. He shouted for someone to come, for someone to do _something_ , but nobody appeared. It was the fear, the expectation, being unaware of what was going to happen to him what was driving him mad. It was different from how he had felt just a few days before, when even knowing that his life was hanging by a thread, he had been able to keep calm. Then he had had time, he had had a _plan_. Now that his plan had failed, he had nothing. His life was in the hands of others. He still remembered Carol’s words as if she was whispering them in his ear even now.

 _They will give you to the Governor_.

And once that happened, he could consider himself dead.

The door opened, and Glenn and the black woman —Michonne?— entered the cell. Without saying a word, they took him to another place.

_That’s it. It’s over._

They left block D and headed toward block C, going through the same courtyard he had crossed the night before during his failed escape. He knew that asking what was going on would be useless, so he maintained an astonished silence as they entered the cellblock, leaving behind the hall with the security cabin—as he had suspected, all the blocks had the same structure—, and they got into an illuminated cell hallway, the inhabited part of the Prison itself.

He stopped sharply, too confused to keep going, and Michonne pushed him slightly to make him move. His surprise only grew when they guided him to an empty cell at the beginning of the hallway, isolated from the others, and Glenn opened the bar door, indicating him with a head movement to get inside it.

As soon as he entered the cell, docile as a lamb and equally confused, Glenn closed the door, but it seemed more a formality than a measure of security since he only used a bolt to lock it. They left him alone, and after a quick check of the bolt, he confirmed that he could just walk away from the cell whenever he wanted. It was a trap, he was sure. The moment he opened the door, he would fall dead into the ground. However, what was all that pantomime for?

He peeked outside the cell through the door, trying to see beyond. Even when he couldn’t see the cells and the people living in them, the signs of daily life were evident. There were buckets, bottles of water, clothes or bags of food, and he glimpsed a room without bars at the end of the corridor with 3D maneuver gears inside it.

He heard the voices and the steps, though he couldn’t understand what they were saying. He distinguished the calm and slow voice of Hershel, or the peaceful one from Glenn. He even heard a childish voice, which filled him with surprise. The Apocalypse hadn’t been easy for anyone, but children had suffered it with more virulence since they were weaker and vulnerable. Nowadays, seeing a kid was like seeing a shooting star.  

A thudding noise caught his attention —like a pirate on his wooden leg, he remembered— and after a few seconds Hershel appeared in front of him, at the other side of the door. Daryl stepped back.

“May I come in?” the old man asked. As if he had to ask, Daryl thought. He nodded almost unnoticeably.

Hershel unlocked the door and came in without bothering to close the door behind him. He sat in the only seat of the cell, apart from the bed, and looked at him with a gaze that Daryl couldn’t understand.

“How are you feeling?”

Daryl felt trapped in a memory, when he had met Hershel for the first time and he had taken a seat and asked him exactly the same.

“I’m good,” he answered simply. It was pretty clear that he wasn’t. Hershel raised an eyebrow, letting him know that he didn’t believe him.

“I’ve known cows less stubborn than you,” Hershel said, a hint of smile on his face. “Maybe I should start treating you like one.”

Daryl looked at him squinting, not sure if he was joking or not.

“You ain’t a doctor?” he asked after a silence, giving in to his curiosity.

“I was a vet before all this,” he said. “But don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

“It’s okay,” he replied, as if his opinion mattered so much. And talking to himself so low that Hershel almost thought he had imagined it, he added. “I don’t like doctors. Nor hospitals.”

He broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of hospitals and looked away, trying to calm himself down. He cleared his throat and looked at Hershel, finally putting into words the question that had been haunting him since the man had appeared.

“How is she?”

“She’s resting in her cell,” Hershel said, no need to clarify who Daryl was talking about. “I had to stitch that wound on her head, but she’ll be fine.” Hershel made a pause and then continued. “She has told us what you did for her and how you defeated that Titan.”

“It was debilitated after fighting her,” he explained, suddenly uncomfortable.

“Yet it was something extremely dangerous,” Hershel said. “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just walk away?”

Daryl remained silent. He looked at the door, trying to escape from Hershel’s eyes, and he noticed for the first time that Glenn was leaning on the door, and Michonne was standing outside the cell, her hands on the shoulders of a young boy wearing a cowboy hat. Rick was far from them, near the room with the gears, but even from his position, Daryl could feel Rick’s eyes fixed on him. He looked back at Hershel, scared, and he replied to his reaction with a calm expression.

“I see…” Hershel said as if Daryl had confirmed something he had been suspecting. “Tell me, Daryl. How many Titans have you killed?”

“What?” Daryl asked in returned, completely surprised by the question.

“Just answer the question,” Hershel said, patiently. “How many?”

“I dunno. Around seven, with my brother,” he answered. “What’s all this ‘bout?”

“How many people have you killed?” Hershel asked ignoring Daryl’s questions.

Daryl’s look darkened.

“Some.”

“Why?”

“It was my brother’s life and mine or theirs,” he said. He swallowed, nervously. “Okay, old man, I’m done. What do you want with all of this?”

He said it in an aggressive mood, starting to feel vulnerable without knowing why. Hershel stood up from the chair and smiled slightly at him. That small gesture made him relax a bit. There was something in the old man that soothed him, whether he wanted it or not.

“I have one more question for you, Daryl Dixon,” he said. “Do you want to join this group?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're ready for what's coming!


	7. The Price to Pay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than the others but I had to write it. Sorry in advance, Merle fans! Pay attention, this chapter has hints for the future.

**TWO WEEKS LATER**

The Governor was losing his patience, Merle Dixon could see it. His eyes shone with madness, and his fake smiles had disappeared days ago. Merle had never been a person that could be easily scared, but he had never seen a look that froze the blood in his veins like the Governor’s did.

How Daryl and he had in his ranks for so long was a question that he was still asking to himself.

He had lost the count of the days that the Governor had tortured him. It was hard to tell if it was day or night in that old warehouse in Woodbury. He remembered all the times he had locked someone in there following the Governor’s orders. Now he was the prisoner, and the screams that could be heard if anyone paid enough attention were his, not someone else’s.

He knew that it was impossible to escape without help. He knew it because he had helped to turn that place into a jail. Now, he was rotting in here. How ironic life could be.

The chains that tied him to the wall squeaked when he moved, trying to find a more comfortable position. His injured hand hung beside him, useless, as he moved. He suspected that he had a broken bone, probably the ulna. He had had so many broken bones during his whole life thanks to his old man, he could handle one more. But it hurt like a bitch. His right wrist was swollen and thick, showing an ugly bruise, and he couldn’t move his hand without feeling a lacerating pain. If the Governor didn’t kill him, the pain would, he was sure of that.

He got distracted by the sound of the leak, somewhere in the warehouse. That had been the only sound he had heard for days, and in a moment of desperation, he had started to count the drops to calm down. But soon they had turned to be a countdown for the next visit of the Governor.

“…them in the forest,” suddenly a voice said.

He tensed immediately. Someone was coming.

“How are the girls?” the Governor’s voice asked.

“They’re fine, just a bit scared. They’re Lizzie and Mika Samuels,” the other person answered. Merle recognized Cesar Martinez’s voice, the Governor’s right hand. “A walker killed their father before we found them.”

He could barely understand what they were saying. Their voices got to him distorted, but they were getting closer. He didn’t have to think much to know who they were going to see.

“Give them a nice room and make sure that—.“ Merle didn’t get to hear the rest of the sentence. “And send a message to Negan. He will have to come earlier than we expected.”

“Got it.”

They didn’t say anything else. Merle noticed then the moans and grunts that accompanied them. A walker, without any doubt. Their steps stopped before the door of the warehouse. After a tinkling and some failed attempts to put the key in the keyhole, the door opened, revealing two silhouettes.

Merle looked at them, blinking in the weak light of the corridor that hurt his eyes after hours of darkness.

“Darling? Is that you?” he asked, giving his voice a ridiculous tone. “I was afraid you ain’t comin’ today. I was starting to feel lonely.”

The Governor stepped into the big room, his steps echoing in the enormity of the warehouse. Martinez didn’t enter the room. He stayed outside as the moans became louder now that the door was opened.

“How is your forearm?” the Governor asked nicely, stopping just a few feet away from him. That gave Merle more shivers down his spine than any threat he could have ever voiced.

“Oh, pretty well. How’s your search goin’? You found the gears you lost?” Merle asked in return, sarcasm filling his words. He saw the smile fading from the Governor’s and his expression getting colder, tearing the nice mask apart, and Merle thought that it was the scariest —but also the most satisfying— thing he had seen that day.

“I’m not here for your games,” the Governor said. “I’m here to give you a last chance to cooperate with us.”

Merle started laughing. It was always the same: the Governor asking him to cooperate and then losing his temper like the damn psychopath he was. He remembered the last time that had happened, and his forearm did too.

“You can go back through that door ‘cause ain’t gonna tell you shit,” Merle said. “Ain’t gonna beg you for my life either.”

He wasn’t stupid. Since the moment he had fallen into the Governor’s hands, he had known that he was a dead man. It wouldn’t make any difference if he told him where the gears were, he would kill him without hesitation. It wasn’t just about stealing some weapons. They had made an ass of the Governor, and he had to pay the price for it. But as long as he could, he had to buy some time for Daryl. He had to give his little brother a chance.

The Governor fixed his only eye on him.

“Wrong answer,” he said. And then he approached him with parsimony, as if he was enjoying it. Merle tried to get away from him, but the chains didn’t let him get too far. “Wrong answer.”

Before Merle could react, the Governor raised his foot and let it fall into his injured forearm. A horrid crack echoed in the room, and Merle shouted in pain, feeling like his arm was being torn off. Tears ran down his cheeks, with Merle unable to hold them back, and he desperately gasped for breath. Outside, the walker grunted harder, drawn by the screams.

“But if you won’t talk, your brother will,” the Governor said, showing a disturbing smile on his face. “I’ll ask him personally once we’ve caught him.”

“Fuck you,” Merle snarled, holding his arm close to his chest. He had to control himself not to scream every word, but finally he managed to continue. “You’ll never find out where he is, you bastard.”

“But Merle,” he said, a cruel glint in his remaining eye now. “We have _already_ found him.”

Merle looked back at him, eyes wide-open with shock. He didn’t trust his words though, not at first. That man was a compulsive liar, and surely he would tell him anything to make him talk.

“You’re lying,” Merle hissed, grinding his teeth to hold back the pain. He didn’t dare look at his arm, too badly afraid of what he would find. Not with that son of a bitch in front of him.

The Governor glanced down to his hand, examining his nails calmly as if Merle hadn’t spoken.

“I took your brother for a smarter man, if I have to be honest,” he said. “Hiding in the Prison with the sheriff and his group is not a great idea. That was your brilliant plan? Stealing _my_ weapons and giving them to my enemies?”

Merle tried to keep a straight face, wishing his expression wouldn’t betray him. What was he talking about? Daryl in the Prison? Had they captured him? However, there was something in the Governor’s words that didn’t make any sense. He had talked about Daryl as if he had joined the Prison group.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“I don’t care what you believe or not,” the Governor answered as he wandered around, taking step by casual step. “I don’t care if you’re trying to protect your brother or not. He’s gonna pay the price, the same as you. That Prison won’t be enough to protect him.”

He stopped walking. Now he was giving him his back, and Merle couldn’t see his face anymore. His voice, however, was clear when he talked.

“It’s been a pleasure, Merle.”

There was a farewell implied in those words, and Merle knew that those were the last he was going to hear. The Governor headed towards the open door and left the room. Merle still heard him saying something to Martinez, something he couldn’t understand because of the walker’s noises.

When they pulled the walker inside the warehouse and closed the door, the heavy click of the lock announcing his death sentence, he didn’t beg. He didn’t scream, nor cry. He just fought. For him. For Daryl.

He fought until the end.


	8. Trails On The Mud

There were always eyes fixed on him. With every step he took further than he was supposed to, with every word he said too loudly, he felt the attention falling upon him. He could hear the conversations going silent when he got closer, or the curious looks —inquisitive, sometimes— that followed him whenever he walked around the cellblock like a caged lion.

He knew that he might have been accepted among the Prison survivors, but he still had to earn the right to be considered one of them. However, they shared their food with him and offered him one of the cells of the cellblock, as an equal, and it was enough for him for the moment.

They never left him alone. There was always one of them following his steps, and though he appreciated solitude more than anything in the world, he accepted the vigilance without a word.

He still remembered Rick’s words, barely a day after Hershel had asked him the questions. He had gone to his cell before the first light of day, when nobody was awake yet. He was calm that day, and he talked to him frankly, setting the rules that Daryl would have to follow if he wanted to survive. No nice words, no charming lies, just the truth. That wasn’t the first time they had accepted strangers into the group, Rick explained to him, but it was the first time since the Governor had attacked the Prison, months ago. Since then, every person from the outside was considered a potential enemy. Truth be told, if it hadn’t been for Carol, Daryl would be dead by then.

“I’m keeping this group together. Alive. I’ve been doing that all along, no matter what,” he eventually said. His voice hardened. “Betray us and I’ll make your life a damn hell.”

Daryl didn’t answer. He had nothing to say, and he wasn’t expected to say anything either. He wondered whether Rick really cared about his people or if he was just like the Governor, who despite all his charismatic kindness and huge smiles, considered people under his charge nothing but numbers that helped him to make Woodbury a safer place. Disposable numbers whose names he forced himself to remember to keep the show on. To keep being a king of fools.

Or, on the contrary, he may be a leader that considered his group his family. Rick’s words and behavior seemed to say so, but Daryl knew that that couldn’t be. Not in their world. If the Governor had let Merle and him stay in Woodbury for so long, it had been because they were useful for him. They were good builders and good fighters, and he had given them a shelter in exchange for their service. With Rick, it would be exactly the same. He knew it. He accepted it. That was how the world worked now.

He watched Rick as he turned towards the door. But before leaving the cell, Rick spoke once more.

“We know what the Governor’s men did at the Yellow Jacket Creek,” he said. “Karen was there, she saw everything but she could escape. We know you weren’t there, she told us. But we don’t know _you_ , so if you try anything, if you touch or look anyone in a way we don’t like, trust me: you’ll wish to be dead.” He looked straight in Daryl’s eyes, and he bore it without a blink. “We don’t have room for rapists.”

Daryl shook his head, disgusted, though he remained silent again. If he wasn’t mistaken, what Rick was talking about had taken place five months ago. Some of the men had come back to Woodbury with a weeping child with them. They had said that they had found him alone in the woods, near the Yellow Jacket Creek. He had lost his group during a Titan attack, they said, and the Governor didn’t question it. But Daryl knew that something else had happened. He could tell from the kid’s fear and the men’s comments. It was none of his business, though, so he followed Merle’s advice and forgot about the issue.

He felt Rick’s eyes locked on him, and he nodded, serious. Rick nodded in return and left the cell.

This had been two weeks ago.

Since then, Daryl had wandered around the Prison like a tortured ghost, feeling as if he was a true inmate. He had just left once the Prison, when he had decided to show to the group the refuge where the gears were. But that was the only time he had left behind the Prison wall and its never-ending fences. Or, to be fair, the only time _they_ had let him go outside. As Carol had told him, the Governor was still looking for him, and it would be dangerous for him to leave the security of the Prison. But Daryl knew that there was another reason for it: he was being tested.

And he had accepted it again, not having any other choice, and he used the forced rest to recover from his wounds and try to get used to the Prison’s life. However, worry grew stronger inside him with every passing day. What if Merle had been to the refuge in the meantime? He hadn’t seen any sign of his brother when he had shown the refuge to Rick and the others, but that had been a long time ago.

Suddenly, a knocking on the door distracted him. He looked up from the book he was trying to read —Tyreese had given it to him, and Daryl still remembered the confusion on the black man’s face when he had joked about the lack of pictures in the book— and discovered Carol gazing at him from the door.

“It’s your turn to watch over me?” he asked by way of greeting, trying to hide his relief beneath a rough tone. Where any other person would have found an offensive question, Carol raised an eyebrow and looked at him, amused.

“Oh, no, I’ve come to enjoy your silent company,” she replied, and Daryl squinted, trying to find out if she was mocking him or not.

“Stop.”

“But it’s true,” answered Carol. Behind her, on the corridor, Sasha passed hastily, carrying with her one of the gears, and she asked something to someone before her steps became fainter until they finally disappeared. Daryl guessed that it was one of _those_ days.

“Michonne and Rick had discovered some Titans loitering near the Prison,” she explained. Daryl looked at her. He was right: it _was_ one of _those_ days. “They’ve seen two, but there could be more. Rick says we need all the people available to get rid of them. Will you join us?”

“Rick know ‘bout this?” he asked, clearly surprised.

“Rick asked _specifically_ for you,” she said, unable to hold back a smile as her eyes met his. Daryl felt slightly excited, the promise of going outside filling him with expectation. He noticed that Carol was still looking at him, and he cleared his throat.

“So you’re ready or not?” she insisted.

The corner of his lips lifted in a repressed smile, and he nodded to Carol.

“Yeah.”

“Come with me, then,” she said while waiting for him to get up from his bed. “Sasha and I will be your babysitters.”

“Stop.”

* * *

 

“’m ready,” said Daryl as he left his cell wearing his gear. Carol smiled at him, trying to encourage him, and Sasha looked briefly at him before heading towards the cellblock exit without a word. Rick, Michonne and Glenn were already outside, waiting for them.

Carol sensed Daryl’s nervousness as he bit his thumb, and she felt her own tension bubbling up inside her.  It was the first time they would work as a team, fighting Titans in order to avoid them to get too close to the Prison. Their lives would depend on him, the same way that his would depend on her, on Sasha, on the others. They would have to trust each other for the first time.

That Titan hunting was yet another test orchestrated for him. As Rick had told them, the Titans they were going to kill were an “easier” prey, if “easy” was a word to describe them. Contrary to what they might have thought at first, even among Titans there was some variability. Some were bigger, others faster, while some seemed to move more clumsily. The two Titans they had seen were slower, and one of them had several wounds and cuts, even had lost an arm. It was Rick’s belief that they would have to learn how to work with Daryl —after all, he had killed a Titan on his own, so his ability was an important addition to the group— and, in case things went wrong, they would be able to handle the situation.

Carol watched him as they left the building and joined the rest of the group on the field. Rick was talking with Michonne, but the moment he saw Daryl, he nodded with approval in his direction, and Daryl tilted his head in return. Glenn said some nice words to him and tapped him on the shoulder, in an attempt to reassure him. But Carol noticed how Daryl cringed when he felt the unexpected touch and stepped aside automatically.

It was being difficult for all of them to get used to Daryl’s presence. He was always cautious and nervous, as if he was constantly expecting to be attacked at any moment, afraid of any touch, of any gentle word. He reminded her of herself.

However, she had seen the changes in his behavior during the past two weeks. He was trying so hard to fit in with the group. He talked to Hershel about animals —as Hershel told her later, Daryl had been fond of hunting before the end of the world happened—, helped Glenn to repair some of the gears, revealing his own mechanics knowledge, and some little details that seemed impossible for him to have when they had first met him. When he had asked her if she was okay, just a few days after his escape, with his eyes down and his hoarse voice, she had seen nothing but a man that was trying to make things right, maybe for the first time in his life.

He just needed a chance.

As they approached the wall, Carol saw Tyreese and Karen, who were on watch now, waiting for them on both sides of the heavy inside gate. The access gates had an intricate system of pulleys and levers that made it possible to open the two metal doors —both the outside and inside— from the inside. It was the only way out of the Prison, the only weak spot of the wall, which meant that it was the easiest part to attack.

Karen whispered something to Tyreese and headed towards the watch tower. Carol watched her as she got inside.

Karen had been avoiding Daryl consciously since he had arrived at the Prison and she had found out that he was one of the Governor’s men. She had gone to his cell while he was unconscious to confirme that he wasn’t one of the men that had attacked her group, but after that, she had refused to even take part of the council that had decided Daryl’s fate two weeks ago. Now, little by little, and after knowing what Daryl had done for Carol, she was starting to trust him a little more.

Tyreese turned on the mechanism and the gate rattled open.

“Let’s go,” said Rick, getting into the tunnel that the gate had revealed. They all followed him in silence. Carol tried not to think about the hundreds of tons of concrete above her head, ignoring the tightness in her chest as they walked through the six meter-long tunnel until the outside gate.

As soon as they exited the tunnel on the other side of the wall, the gate closed noisily. Some birds took flight from the trees on the edge of the forest, and then everything went quiet. With silence settling around them, expectation grew, and they started the search with a feeling of danger running through their veins.

Tracking down the trail of the Titans was easy, they just had to follow the path of deep footprints on the mud and broken branches that seemed to lead their way. After all, Titans had nothing to hide from.

The trail was clear for a while as they went into the forest, where the vegetation was wilder and the light weaker.

“Ain’t no trail,” murmured Daryl suddenly. He stepped away from the group, looking for it, but he found nothing. The trail had disappeared as if the Titans had vanished into thin air. As if they had known that they were being followed.

“No, look,” said Rick, pointing somewhere ahead. His hand slowly grabbed the grip of his gear, as if he was trying to avoid drawing the attention of whatever he was looking at. Carol followed the direction of his look, starting to fear what she was going to find.

Some meters ahead of them, half hidden between the trees, a Titan was watching them. Completely still, like a curious kid, while its blood dripped from several wounds. It fixed its eyes on them and bit the air, the horrible sound of its teeth gnashing giving them chills. But it didn’t attack them, it just kept watching them. Waiting.

“Glenn, Michonne, with me,” muttered Rick. “We’re gonna end this now. Carol, Daryl, Sasha, stay tuned.”

“But where is the other one?” asked Sasha, her voice trembling with concern. Carol saw her own fear reflected in her.

 “ _There!_ ” shouted Daryl. A roar echoed behind them, and Carol looked back just in time to see the other monster leaving its hiding place behind some rocks and trees. If it wasn’t impossible, she would have thought that the monsters had just ambushed them.

The wounded Titan roared in response. Then, they both attacked them.

“Go!” Rick shouted.

There was no moment to hesitate. Carol pulled the trigger of her gear and saw out of the corner of her eye Sasha and Daryl doing the same. The Titan stretched its arm to catch her, but she activated the gas powered mechanism to propel herself out of its reach. She landed ten meters away from it, and quickly turned around to analyze the situation. Rick, Glenn and Michonne were taking care of the first Titan, about twenty meters away, while the other was screaming, trying to seize Sasha.

“Carol!” Sasha shouted. She hid behind a tree when the Titan tried to squash her with its fist, and looked at Carol, nodding with the head. She was ready.

“On your left.”

Carol let out a gasp, startled, and turned her head to find Daryl standing next to her. He was looking straight at her, grasping the swords so tight that his knuckles had turned white.

“Ok, let’s do our part,” Carol said. Even with the tension of the moment, she felt strangely calm while looking at their target. “You ready?”

She took his grunt as a _yes_ , and she pulled the trigger once more. Their mission was simple: to distract the Titan in order to give Sasha enough time to cut its neck off. In other words, they were the bait.

She flew through the air, heading towards the monster’s right arm. She placed a cut on its upper arm, and the monster screamed in pain. She landed on the ground and ran between the trees, trying to get out of its way. She could feel adrenaline surging through her body as she activated the gas propellant again.

Daryl was in the air too, and they avoided each other with the grace of two birds in full flight. Carol couldn’t help but smile with excitement. She heard Daryl shouting something in return that she couldn’t understand.

They both landed on the ground, next to each other. Sasha was having troubles cutting the right spot on the Titan’s neck.

“We gotta make it fall,” Carol gasped. “Go to the heels.”

“Got it,” he said.

Carol aimed the iron wire to the Titan’s leg and shot it. As the gear pulled her closer, she cut the giant Achilles tendon of the monster. Beside her, she caught Daryl doing the same.

“You son of a bitch!” he shouted. The Titan bellowed and staggered, unable to walk. It tried to take a step and crashed to the ground, taking a small tree along with him.

Daryl moved back and grabbed Carol’s arm to drag her away from the Titan, which had started to writhe.

Sasha landed on its back and finally sliced through the Titan’s nape. It stopped moving the moment the swords cut its flesh, and then a thick smoke started to billow out of the wound. Carol frowned and shook her hand in front of her face. She noticed another column of smoke some meters ahead, where the other Titan was lying dead.

Daryl approached the Titan and checked out all the wounds that Sasha had inflicted on it. There were several cuts around the nape of the neck, in the head and shoulders. He raised an eyebrow.

“It gotta be the nape,” he said, sarcastic. “Don’t ya’ll know nothing?”

Sasha didn’t react to the comment. She just stared at him and walked away a few steps. Carol looked sadly at her. She was clinging to the idea that they could have gotten Bob back if they had exchanged Daryl for him, and she still refused to talk to Daryl more than necessary. Carol was sure that Sasha would eventually realize that her way had never been a real option.

“Nice job,” said Rick as he, Michonne and Glenn approached them. “Now we gotta go before a swarm of walkers appears.”

The way back home was more relaxed and they talked in low whispers. It was a nice morning, and even the birds dared to sing their songs under the sunlight. Carol felt lighthearted for the first time in a long time.

But nice things didn’t last forever.

Some hours after they had gotten back to the Prison, the Governor showed up at their gates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you for my beta-readers for their help and support. And thanks to you who are reading this fic!


	9. Parley

Michonne raised the alarm: there were two of the Governor’s men at their gates, Caesar Martinez and Shumpert.

They appeared out of nowhere and stood in front of the wall defiantly. Martinez had a piece of white sheet wrapped around his wrist in a sign of peace while Shumpert looked around them like a vigilant shadow.

Martinez asked — _demanded_ — to talk to the leader of the Prison. The Governor had sent them because he knew that the traitor Dixon had found shelter among them. He was willing to sit down and negotiate in order to achieve a deal that would benefit both groups. If Rick wanted to know more about the Governor’s conditions, he would have to go with them.

Martinez was clear, concise, and once he said what he was supposed to, he remained silent, arms crossed in front of the chest, impatience implied in his posture. He couldn’t avoid the nervous looks around them, waiting to be attacked by one of the monsters at any moment, but he didn’t move an inch. Minutes went by slowly in the most complete silence as they waited, and then the outside gates of the Prison wall slowly opened between squeaks, revealing Rick behind them. He was accompanied by Hershel, who limped along on his right leg as he followed Rick out of the wall. They were both armed with their gears.

Rick fixed his gaze on the visitors as he walked towards them until they stirred, feeling uncomfortable under his inquisitive, crazy eyes. There was a voice in his head, a voice that told him to kill them. That was the wisest option, the only way to deal with the Governor and his people. The memory of the attack at the Prison was still too fresh on his mind, and only the calming presence of Hershel next to him stopped him from taking the hidden knife on his belt and cutting their throats without a second thought. It had been Hershel’s request that had convinced him to hear whatever the Governor had to tell. And eventually, Rick had listened to him.

It might be a trap, and if that was the case, he had ordered that the Prison should be ready for an attack if he and Hershel didn’t come back in an hour. He couldn’t take chances anymore. The Governor was unpredictable, and even when he didn’t seem the kind of man who would sit down to negotiate —not at this point, at least— Hershel believed that he would keep his word for that parley. The Governor had something to gain from this.

So they joined Martinez and Shumpert without a word and followed them away from the Prison. They took the road that connected the Prison with the main highway of the region, now covered by the dirt and the fallen branches that months, maybe years —he couldn’t tell— of neglect had left behind.

They walked until they couldn’t see the Prison anymore. The forest around the road had grown wildly, invading the broken asphalt on the road’s edges. They didn’t share a single word during the walk.

The forest cleared up when they arrived at a fork. Rick doubted that they were more than a kilometer away from the Prison. Their guides stopped, and he looked around. There was nobody there.

He shared a glance with Hershel and grasped his swords’ handles. Maybe it was a trap, after all.

After some seconds of expectation, a branch cracked in the distance and a movement caught his eye on the edge of the forest. The Governor stepped out from behind the trees and calmly walked up the shoulder of the road calmly, raising his hands in a peace sign and grinning falsely. Following him there was a man with a weak constitution, wearing glasses and walking with hesitant steps. Everything about him seemed to admit that he wasn’t used to being outside fortified walls.

Rick assumed that the second man was Milton because he fit the description Daryl had given him. He had never seen him before, though he didn’t wonder why since the man looked more used to books and desks than weapons and Titans. He looked clever and observant, not the type of man who would stay with the Governor for so long.

Rick let his hands rest misleadingly relaxed on the handles of the gear, though his right thumb kept tapping unnoticeably on it. He didn’t see the nervous look on Milton’s face when he looked at him, focused as he was on the Governor, who advanced until they were three meters apart. They were face to face for the first time in months, and time seemed to freeze.

Rick squinted his eyes as the memories of their last encounter went through his mind. How they had caught Andrea and T-Dog when they had been on a run in the woods and forced Andrea to go back the Prison as if nothing was wrong, threatening to kill T-Dog if she did anything suspicious. How they had attacked when the iron gates were being opened to let the woman pass.

It had been a chaotic, improvised attack. Some of the Governor’s men got inside the Prison through the gates while others tried to climb the wall with their gears. The Governor didn’t think he would find such a great resistance inside. He had underestimated them, assuming that they were just some lucky survivors that didn’t know how to handle the advantage that the Prison gave them. And in the beginning, he had been right. None of the Prison survivors had ever expected an attack like that, orchestrated by humans. They had thought that they would be safe, more focused on the threat that came from Titans and walkers than from other human beings.

In the end that mistake had cost them so much.

They had lost both Andrea and T-Dog, and several others had gotten injured. The illusion of security was gone, and with it, the idea that maybe, just maybe, they could start over in that place. That had been a severe blow for Rick, but the disgrace had made him try harder to correct and avoid their mistakes of the past. Grief had made him realize that he needed to be a leader more than ever for the ones who were left. For Lori, Carl, the baby, for everybody else, he had to try.

That had been before Lori and the baby’s death.

Two weeks after the attack, Lori had started feeling an excruciating pain in her belly. It was too soon for the baby, too soon… Rick had left her in the bed of their cell to look for Hershel. In a matter of hours, her screams and cries fell silent. The last time Rick had seen her, her dead body had been resting on her bed as if she was sleeping, pale and cold like an ice queen.

Rick lost his mind then.

And while his mind evoked all these memories as he stared at the Governor, he felt Hershel’s hand on his shoulder, trying to remind him what they were there for. Their main objective was to negotiate with the Governor and get Bob back.

“I was sure that you would come to talk, Rick. The old ways don’t fail,” said the Governor in that moment, breaking the tense silence, while playing with an identical piece of white fabric in his right hand. “I’m glad that you listened to the voice of reason.”

Rick ignored his mocking comment with a contemptuous gaze as he tilted his head.

“We have a lot to talk about,” said the Governor when it was clear that Rick wasn’t going to say a word. “I hope we can solve our… problems like the gentlemen we are.”

The Governor seemed confident, his manners and gestures revealing his charismatic side. He acted as if he had everything under control.

“I’m so sorry that we couldn’t meet in a better place,” continued the Governor. Rick found himself breathing deeply, about to lose his nerves before the useless explanations of the Governor. He suspected that it was exactly what the Governor wanted. “But…”

“I don’t care,” Rick interrupted. “You wanna talk about something. So talk now, I’m listening.”

The Governor didn’t lose his smile, but Rick felt that he didn’t like to be interrupted.

“Okay, let’s talk about business,” he said. Besides him, Milton looked at him. “As you probably know, some weeks ago two men I had trusted betrayed me and stole something from me that I would say if of _vital_ importance.” He fixed his only eye on Rick. “One of them got to escape. And when I thought that he had disappeared forever, imagine my surprise when one of my men told me that he had seen him with your people. You’ll understand that I want him back so he can face the consequences of his actions.”

Rick ground his teeth but said nothing. The Governor hadn’t finished his speech.

“Of course, I would really appreciate this act of cooperation. And so would your friend Bob. I think he really wants to see that Prison of yours again.” He smiled to himself as if it was an inside joke that only he could understand. “After that, I promise to leave you alone. You won’t see me or my people ever again, and the same goes for your people. We both care about the people we’re in charge of, and I think this is the solution.” He made a pause, and then… “So that’s the deal: Dixon for Bob. Give me Dixon and we’ll be at peace.”

Rick looked down while thinking about what to say next.

“So, do you think you can come and tell me that we can live in peace after what happened months ago?” he said, trying his best to keep his voice controlled.

“Attacking that Prison was a huge mistake that I don’t want to repeat,” the Governor answered. The smile on his face faded as he remembered everything he had lost that day, but he seemed to force himself to hide the rage. “I’m giving you the choice to end this hostility. I think it’s a fair deal.”

_Liar_.

“Before we make any decisions,” Hershel intervened, breaking his silence for the first time as he took a step ahead, drawing the Governor’s attention away from Rick, “we want to see Bob. See if he’s alright.”

“He’s okay,” the Governor said, his face so calm that nobody would ever think that he was lying. “Martinez and I checked him out before leaving. He can’t wait to get out of there, so to speak.”

Rick shook his head. He didn’t trust any of the Governor’s words. He knew that he wouldn’t respect their ceasefire, and would no doubt in kill them all if he got the chance. The Governor didn’t have the reputation of being a merciful man, and they all knew the rumors that surrounded him.  Giving him Daryl Dixon wasn’t even an option now.

“You said he stole something really important from you,” Rick said. “We can give you that. You can get back your gears.”

“Don’t you understand anything, Rick?” the Governor asked. “You’re a leader yourself. Leaders have to look strong in front of their people. They have to respect them. If you lose that respect —” at this point Rick felt certain that with _respect_ , the Governor meant _fear_ — “you lose everything. Daryl Dixon has to pay for what he has done. Are you gonna risk all you have achieved for just one man you don’t know? He’s not a saint, Rick. Will you risk _your son’s_ life for a murderer?”

There was something in the way the Governor said that last sentence, in the way he said _son_ , that made Rick’s blood boil in his veins. He saw the eternal and maniacal smile curling the Governor’s lips. He realized that their negotiations had been destined to fail, even before the start. The Governor wasn’t willing to negotiate, he only wanted one thing, and Rick just couldn’t give it to him.

The peace the Governor was talking about was impossible. They wouldn’t reach any peace until one of them was gone or dead. The moment he understood it, he caught Hershel’s eyes, which he found full of disappointment. _I tried_ , he would have liked to tell him. Instead, he felt anger bubble up inside him.

“I can’t accept your conditions,” he said, finally.

The Governor froze on his feet and, like a flame blown out by the wind, the smile vanished from his face.

“Wrong choice,” he said, his voice switching to a menacing tone. Suddenly, the atmosphere around them, tense until that moment, seemed to turn hostile. “I’m offering you a way out of this situation. But you just signed your death sentence.”

At this point Rick couldn’t hold his tongue, and the words came out of his mouth low but clear, defiantly.

“Maybe you have signed yours.”

The Governor turned pale with rage, but Milton stepped towards him and whispered something in his ear. His whole attitude showed the fear he felt, and for a second, Rick thought that the Governor would hit his friend.

“The meeting is over,” the Governor said as he stepped back, while Martinez and Shumpert got closer to him like two bodyguards. “Say hi to your son for me.”

Rick tilted his head and took a step in his direction, bursting in anger, but then he heard the moans of the monsters. A moment later three walkers emerged from the edge of the forest, their putrid stink hitting him violently even from that distance.  However, his look remained fixed on the Governor as he and his men went away.

“Rick,” called Hershel, taking him back to reality. His voice seemed tired. “Let’s go back.”

* * *

 

“They’re here,” Michonne said. Her eyes were fixed on the road that Rick and Hershel had followed barely half an hour before. She looked up to face Daryl, but she didn’t get an answer from him, just a nervous grunt as he leaned his back against the wall.

They were on the watch tower, inside the cubicle in top of it to protect themselves from the soft but persistent rain that had started falling ten minutes ago. The sky, all gray and overcast, seemed to be mocking them after the shining sun in the morning. The clouds got darker into the north, announcing a huge storm.

Daryl had joined her without a word. She had been looking out through the dirty window when she had heard the footsteps as somebody came up the stairs of the watch tower and opened the hatch in the floor. She had discovered Daryl there, standing on the last flight of stairs while holding open the hatch, frozen like a wild animal caught by surprise. Michonne thought that, if he were a feline, he would have had his back arched and his eyes opened wide to catch any movement, ready to either fight or flee.

She looked back at him with the same caution, but eventually turned her head to keep watching the forest below them. She sensed Daryl getting into the cubicle and closing the hatch before sitting down on the floor. Neither of them said a word as a heavy but strangely comfortable silence fell upon them. She didn’t ask him what he was doing there. She knew that Daryl used to go up there all alone, probably feeling trapped between the high walls of the Prison. Why he had come while she was still there, or why he hadn’t gone to any of the other empty watch towers was something that intrigued her.

But something in his slightly tense posture made her realize that this wasn’t an accidental encounter, or at least, that he was counting on finding her there. Perhaps he had just wanted to join her there. She remembered his face as he had opened the hatch, how he had looked at her as if he was ready to be rejected and leave again. He always seemed to be afraid of the others.

Michonne could imagine how nervous he had to be. After all, Rick and Hershel were deciding his fate out there in the woods somewhere. She would have liked to reassure him, because he was one of them now. After what he had done for Carol and the efforts he was putting to fit in their community, even when it was clear that he wasn’t exactly comfortable doing that, Michonne had found that she… trusted him somehow. And her intuition was usually correct.

However, she didn’t say out loud what she was thinking. Neither did Daryl. They both stayed in silence, listening to the rain drumming onto the ceiling until Rick and Hershel appeared on the edge of the forest. She stepped outside the cubicle, feeling the rain caressing her dark skin the moment she left her shelter, and shouted to Glenn, fifteen meters below, who hadn’t left his place beside the gates when the rain had started, and he turned on the mechanism to open them.

The Prison gates opened for Rick and Hershel. Next to her in the rain, Daryl sighed deeply, trying to relax. She followed Rick with her eyes as he walked through the tunnel and entered the Prison yard, followed by Hershel. Glenn met them and they started talking. From her position it was impossible to know what they were saying, but there was a moment when Glenn pointed at the watch tower and Rick nodded.

Moments later, Hershel and Glenn headed toward cellblock C across the wet expanse of green. Meanwhile, Rick approached the watch tower with his determined pace. As they waited for Rick to reach the top of the tower, inside the cubicle again, hearing his footfalls coming up, Michonne looked at Daryl and noticed his tense jaw muscles.

The hatch opened and Rick entered. He mumbled something as he got close to the window and glanced beyond the wall, looking for any sign of the Governor. As he did so, his gritty voice joined the rain’s tapping.

“The Governor didn’t want to negotiate,” he said, his eyes lost in the distance. “He just wanted you, Daryl. Are you sure that you just stole him some weapons?”

“What about Bob?” Michonne asked. She stood next to Rick, trying to catch his eyes.

Rick didn’t answer immediately, but when he did, his voice was harsher.

“You said you can help up to get into Woodbury, right?”

Daryl didn’t need him to say his name to know that Rick was talking to him.

“Yeah.”

“Good, ‘cause we’re gonna need you to get Bob out of there. We have no other choice.” He swallowed, and then added. “We are going to war. Maybe not next week, nor next month, but we’re going to war.”

He turned around to face them.

“Hershel is telling the others now. We don’t have the power to attack Woodbury right now, but I swear, we will.”

“The Governor, he can’t either,” Daryl said. “He needs to rearm himself. He needs more men, more weapons and more time. Last time he learned the lesson. Won’t be a problem in a couple months.”

“Good,” said Rick. He was about to say something else when a sound broke the quiet of the rainy afternoon. It wasn’t the inhuman scream of a Titan, or some deafening thunder. It was… a car horn.

Michonne shared a confused gaze with Rick and both looked out of the window, trying to find the source of the sound. It was so out of place, strident like a piece of chalk scratching across a blackboard and infinitely more dangerous.

“There,” Daryl mumbled as he hit the glass window with his finger, pointing at the road that led to the highway. Rick and Michonne looked in that direction to discover a white van approaching the Prison. A fucking white van, the driver leaning on the horn and guiding a bunch of walkers after it.

Neither of them doubted who was in there.

“You said they had no vehicles,” Rick grunted, accusingly. “Where are they getting the gas?”

“They didn’t have any when I was there,” replied Daryl, angry. “All the stations ran out of gas a long time ago.”

“I don’t-“

“Look!” Michonne hissed, shutting down the argument with only one word.

The feeling of panic kept growing as the van continued its way toward the Prison and stopped in front of the iron gates. The passenger door opened and Martinez stepped out of the vehicle. Running from the oncoming walkers, he ran to the trunk and opened it. He returned to the open passenger door and got into the van while two walkers left the trunk and joined the herd, moving clumsily. Suddenly, the horn fell silent and the driver —Michonne couldn’t see them— drove away, the two rear doors banging open and closed behind it in its rush to run away. Just a few seconds later, the van had disappeared on the road.

Everything felt noisily silent.

“That’s Bob,” said Michonne, breaking the silence, her voice weak by shock. “That walker is Bob.”

Rick looked carefully as she pointed, turning paler with every passing second, until he found the walker Michonne was indicating. Bob.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, grinding his teeth, and hit the window with his fist, making it tremble under his rage.

Michonne looked away, disgusted by the sight, just to see Daryl staring at the walker herd with terror and disbelief on his face.

“Merle…”

“What?” asked Michonne.

“Merle,” he repeated, vaguely aware of their presence. Without a second thought, he turned around towards the hatch and opened it violently.

“Hey!” exclaimed Rick. He was fast enough to grab Daryl’s arm before he jumped onto the stairs. “No one’s leaving the Prison now. It might be a trap.”

Daryl looked at his strong hand wrapped around his arm, and then faced Rick with a mix of anger, pain and defiance on his eyes that would have terrified the bravest of men.

“Don’t touch me,” he said in a thin, broken voice. He yanked his arm out of Rick’s grasp and left before Rick could do anything else. It took Rick, taken by surprise as he was, a few seconds to run downstairs after him.

Michonne reacted quickly and followed the two of them, though they were so fast that she just could hear their hasty footfalls several steps ahead of her. When she reached the bottom of the staircase, Daryl was already facing Glenn, shouting at him to open the gates for him. His desperate screams echoed across the yard.

She saw some people running over the yard in their direction, probably drawn by the car horn. Sasha was among them, followed by Carol and Tyreese, and Michonne prayed that all of them would be able to stop Daryl before things went wrong.

But Daryl was completely out of control. When he understood that Glenn wasn’t going to open the gates, and he felt himself trapped by Rick, barely a few meters away from him, he didn’t second-guess himself. He pulled his arm back to gain momentum and punched Glenn in the face.

The young man fell to the ground with a scream of pain, and Daryl hurried up to trigger the gates’ mechanism. Before anyone could stop him, he was running through the tunnel and out of the wall.

“Daryl!” Carol shouted, still too far away from the wall, but Daryl didn’t hear her —or didn’t want to.

By then, the herd of walkers had started spreading out. They all witnessed through the opened gates how Daryl kept running, looking for Merle, and went into the forest without looking back, completely unarmed. Then Rick turned off the mechanism and the gates closed noisily. He was furious at this point, and he shouted to the rest of them.

“No one leaves!” His voice was authoritarian enough to make it clear that there was no way to contradict his orders. “He’s on his own now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it took me so long to write this chapter. The past month has been a mess. Anyway, I hope you're ready. With November comes the NaNo, and I'm going to join it -with a light version, I don't think I would be able to write 50k words in a month.
> 
> As always, thanks to my betas (they already know who they are!) and thanks to the readers ❤


	10. Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to write this chapter. Since they skipped it in the show, I decided to write my own version of this scene. I hope you like it!

Daryl came back to the Prison when the stars were high in the sky. He came back with his clothes covered in blood, dirt and tears, the weight of something that nobody could imagine sinking his shoulders. His face was cold and impassible like a marble statue and his eyes were dry and glazed, as if they had run out of tears.

It was Maggie, on watch on the tower with Glenn, the first one who saw him coming out of the woods. Her shouting alerted the others to open the gates, which let him pass between screeches. Some walkers nearby were drawn by the noise, but by the time they arrived, Daryl was already crossing the tunnel with the outside gates safely closed behind him.

He had come back to the Prison like an abandoned dog, lost and blind with pain. He didn’t even know if they would let him come back after what he had done. But he had to try. He didn’t have anything else to lose. He had nowhere else to go.

His legs seemed unable to hold him as he took one step after another. Everything around him was blurry, and he was barely aware of the silhouettes that followed him cautiously. He just couldn’t get the images that haunted him out of his mind. The bloodshot eyes of a monster that no longer recognized him. A monster with his brother’s face.

He had killed a part of himself today.

Glenn and Maggie stayed a few steps away from him, scared by his vacant expression, as he kept walking without thinking, sure that if he stopped, he would break into a thousand pieces. He wanted to stop, to cry, to scream, to fall, but he didn’t.

A heavy door opened in the distance, its metallic sound echoing in the night air, as Rick left cellblock C in his direction. Neither of them said a word when they encountered in the yard and stood face to face for a while. Daryl had his look fixed on the ground, trying to control the beating of his heart as he clenched his hands into fists, unable to hide the tremor in them. His breathing had turned irregular and superficial, and soon he felt dizzy because of the lack of oxygen.

When he looked up at Rick, he was ready to confront him. He had managed to hide all emotion on his face, leaving instead a cold —but fragile— mask of empty eyes and trembling lips.  He found himself waiting for Rick to be mad at him. Wishing for it. That way it would be easier to lose control. To let his body scream what his mouth couldn’t, to let out all the rage and pain he couldn’t handle anymore.

But all Rick did was to bow his head in front of him. He stepped away to join Maggie and Glenn and let him keep walking towards wherever he was going. Daryl felt surprise, relief and disappointment, all at the same time, and sighed deeply before daring to move again. His pace, slow at first, soon became a hurried race. He ran even though his eyes were burning, his weak mask breaking apart under the pressure of his tears. He fought to hold them back.

When he was about to reach cellblock C, the door opened again, and he almost collided with the person leaving the building hastily. He recognized her blue eyes.

Carol.

“Daryl…?” she started. She couldn’t finish. His defeated gesture silenced her and confirmed the question floating in the air. She stepped back, shocked, and tried to meet his eyes and make him react. Instinctively, she raised a hand to touch him on his arm, hoping to comfort him, but he just avoided her gaze, keeping his head down, and pulled his arm away from her touch.

“Leave me alone,” he said, almost spitting out the words. Carol blinked, hurt by his words more than she would have ever admitted, and watched powerlessly as Daryl dodged her and disappeared inside the building at her back. He closed the door with such violence that it opened again, echoing in the silent night like a bomb.

When the noise faded away, nobody followed him.

***

The Prison belonged to the silence that night. It was the cruel silence of death, heavy, inevitable, full of the dead memories that haunted the living. It seemed as if a spell had fallen upon the Prison, condemning the place to sadness and regret. Even the rain had stopped falling, afraid to break the silence, leaving a cold freshness behind it.

Only emptiness remained.

But there was something that defied it. A suffocated and shameful cry, a sob that somebody was trying to suppress even before it left their lips.

Carol followed the sound with her heart shrunk in anguish. She walked through the corridors of the second floor sadly lit by the moonlight, full of empty cells. Some of them had their mattresses on the floor, as if someone had thrown them down and then forgotten to put them in their place.  They had found that disorder when they had explored the Prison for the first time, and nobody had found the courage to clean up those cells. After a quick look, she continued walking until she got to the last cell of the corridor.

The moment she peeked into the cell, the sobbing stopped abruptly, as if the person in there had heard her soft footfalls. Her eyes took their time to get used to the dim light of the cell, but she soon discovered Daryl’s figure.

He was sitting on the lower bunk bed, his back leaning against the wall, his face half-hidden by the shadows cast by the upper bed. He was rubbing his eyes with rage, trying to erase the trail of tears on his face. He was trying once again to hide his pain.

But Carol knew that there were things that couldn’t be hidden. That _shouldn’t_ be hidden, even though that was something she forgot to apply to herself.

She got inside the cell cautiously. Her feet tripped over something, and when she looked down she found a vest dropped on the floor carelessly. It was a dark vest with two angel wings on the back. The wings, white in better times, had lost their brightness and were now gray and shriveled, like the broken wings of a fallen angel.

“Just go.” She heard his rough voice before she could even take one more step. He had his eyes fixed on his hands, and he was shaking. With cold, with exhaustion, with impotence. “Don’t wanna talk.”

“I haven’t come to talk,” she replied in a quiet voice.

Daryl raised his head towards her. She didn’t see his expression, disguised by the shadow. But she did hear his words, sharp, poisoned.

“Go away. I want to be alone.”

_I don’t want you here._

Carol didn’t move. She didn’t take a step in his direction, but she didn’t step back either. Daryl’s voice felt like a stab in the heart. _Go away_. But she didn’t go. She refused to leave him suffering alone, even when he was asking her to. Even when she had no answer to why she cared so much.

Daryl looked at her during some never-ending seconds, making her feel so small under the destruction of his eyes. She held on, she held on for him. When he realized that she wasn’t going anywhere, he leaned his head against the wall and closed his hand into a fist. Then he hit the wall with all the strength he had left, as if he could get rid of the pain that way. His voice was barely audible between his clenched teeth.

“Just go away.”

_Go away._

He repeated it like a mantra. He hit the wall once again so hard that Carol was afraid that he could hurt himself, and the peeling paint fell over the mattress with a hiss. But she didn’t move this time either.

His voice weakened, more and more suffocated, until he couldn’t talk anymore. With a defeated sound, he buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook as he was unable to hold back the tears that ran freely through his face in a desperate cry.

Carol swallowed. She approached the bed and sat on its edge with extremely care. If he had asked her to leave again, to leave him alone, she would have done it. But he didn’t. He just cringed in his corner, too tired to do anything else. He hated feeling this way. Never in his life had he allowed anybody to see him in a moment of weakness. Every time he had dared to trust someone, he had regretted it. As years had gone by he had learned that his father would give him nothing but new scars, and his mother would give him no more than evasive looks. Not even Merle could be trusted. He had learned to be alone, and alone he would be. Nobody had ever seen his tears, and that was enough to make him wish for Carol to be gone. He was too afraid to let anybody in.

The springs off the mattress squeaked when Carol sat next to Daryl, leaning her back against the wall. She left an empty space between them and waited. He had lowered his hands from his face, making possible for Carol to look at it. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken in their sockets as he stared at the wall in front of him with a heartbreaking expression.

Silence fell upon them. Carol knew that there was nothing she could say to comfort him. Empty words didn’t bring the dead back to life. There was only one thing she could do.

She slowly raised a hand and placed it over his. He didn’t move it away. He didn’t say a word either, nor looked at her. He just stayed still, eyes fixed on the wall, lips trembling without control, apparently so far away from her. Carol squeezed it slightly, waiting that in any moment he would react and yell at her to leave him alone once and for all. But he didn’t.

Carol could feel his hand cold under hers, so she held it tighter with the tiny hope to warm it up. As if she could warm up his cold heart as well with that little gesture. His hand shook slightly and he turned his head away from her, avoiding her eyes.

They stayed that way for a long time. Minutes, maybe hours, she couldn’t tell, just the two of them and the silence around them. It felt like they were worlds away from everything and everyone, even though they were just some meters above from the cells inhabited by the others. In that cell, in that moment, they were all alone.

It was late at night when she decided that it was time to go. She suspected that he had fallen asleep at some point, prey to his own exhaustion. His breathing had resumed its calm pace, and although she didn’t get to see his face clearly, hidden by his locks and the shadows of the cell, she was sure that his eyes would be closed.

She moved slowly, ready to go, feeling her aching muscles after hours in the same position and trying not to wake him up. But as if he had felt her leaving, his hand grabbed hers before she could get up. It was a quick, desperate move, and Carol looked back at their hands, surprised.

“Don’t go,” he whispered. His voice was weak, hoarse. It was almost a plea. She saw his face in the dim light then, his sunken eyes surrounded by dark circles. He looked so tired and vulnerable that she felt her heart tearing apart. “Don’t go.”

“Okay,” she said softly, and sat again with her back resting against the wall, holding his hand firmly. “I won’t go away.”

The truth in her words surprised her. The moment she pronounced them, she knew that she was going to keep her promise. Once again, she wondered why she cared so much. There were so many things she didn’t know about him and yet there she was, mourning the death of a man she hadn’t meet. Just for him.

Daryl nodded unnoticeably. He sighed deeply as he fixed his gaze at the wall in front of him again, consciously avoiding her eyes. But he squeezed her hand shyly, fearfully, as if he didn’t have the right to do so.

Neither of them talked again. They just waited, trying to ignore the pain, the unspoken questions, the silence. They just waited for the night to come to an end.


End file.
